Uruguay's cellar: a ring of smallholdings around Montevideo, planted by Basque and Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth century and still largely worked by their descendants' family bodegas. The founding act belongs to Pascual Harriague, the Basque who established tannat here in the 1870s; the tough grape of the Pyrenean foothills became, improbably, the national variety.
The conditions are the reverse of the South American norm: humid Atlantic seasons on heavy clay over granite, closer in spirit to Bordeaux than to Mendoza, where vintages vary and real winemaking decisions matter. The table is beef asado and the wine is tannat to match it; lately albariño, brought in by growers of Galician descent, has given the Atlantic climate a white of its own.