A high desert at the feet of the Andes, six hundred to fifteen hundred metres up, where nothing grows without the snowmelt that the Huarpe people were already channelling before the Spanish came. Michel Aimé Pouget brought Malbec to the Quinta Normal in 1853; the railway of 1885 and a wave of Italian immigrants turned an oasis into the largest wine region of South America.
Bordeaux's discarded grape found its true home in this dry, sun-hardened air: Malbec deeper and sweeter-fruited than it ever was in France. The modern era has climbed the mountain — the Uco Valley's high, stony vineyards — trading power for freshness, altitude standing in for latitude.