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Winemaking is not new in South America. Indeed in the 16th century, the Spanish and the Church arrived in this continent with the firm intention to settle down their own vineyards in countries then still virgin of any viticulture. It is in Peru that they first grew grapes. Unfortunately, these vineyards were only transitory! The European feared that their national wines lose of their advantages and their monopoly in the market. Then they simply prohibited the extension of these new vines!

Luckyly, history has changed! And now for the last years, have been appearing in our stores, supermarkets and restaurants, magnificent wines, especially Argentineans and Chileans with prices that defy all competition. It seems that these countries have covered partly their lack of experience.

Nevertheless, this lack of eperience might sometimes seems still very important. It is very difficult to recover and to surpass centuries of culture and customs in few decades. Therefore, the South Americans, or rather most of the foreign investors (especially in Argentina), bet on the technological development in the wineries. We are impressed by the size and the modernism of the wineries, new, extreme well design and using the best winemaking technics.

Nevertheless after some weeks in South America, we stated respectively that a great part of wines looks like much iguals, in its own segment of market. You can call that the "Coca-Cola wines" for the chepaest wines, or wines to get good notes for the most expensive. Not that they are bad, on the contrary! But sometimes they lack the expression of a soul, a notion of "terroir".... It seems that the commercial interest is sometimes too important. That is not difficult to understand when you meet the huge wineries in Chile and Argentinean. Here, a production of 500,000 bottles is considered like very small, like "boutique"!

However, we can see the beginning of a change: some wineries of Mendoza (Alta Vista, O. Fournier, Tapiz or Mendel for example), and also of Patagonia or San Juan look for the Argentinian expression of terroirs. It is the case also, but clearly less visible, in Chile, especially in the emergent regions like San Antonio (Matetic), Casablanca or the valley of Lontue (Alta Cima, Caliboro).

The vineyards of Chile and Argentina extend on about a thousand of kilometers. Therefore, they are constituted by a multitude of terroirs, climates and of valleys. It would be such a shame not to take advantage of this!

It is on the other hand interesting to see that other countries of South America like Uruguay or more modestly Bolivia plays the card of wines of terroir. Smaller and often less strong economicaly, their wines surprised us. More concretely Uruguay which adopted tannat as its emblem for their viticulture. Bolivia is only at the beginning of the modern winemaking and works wines under the name of "wines of Alta aturas" that represents the highest vineyards of the world.

South America is today in a phase of transition, to let express its vineyards. Important Protagonists like the Lurton brothers, Michel Rolland (Argentina and Chile), Alberto Antonini (Chile), and Bernard Magrez (Uruguay) invested in this magnificent continent, ideal for the culture of the vines. This is maybe their task to show the road to the terroir, thanks to their great wines...

Thanks for the great amiability of all the participant wineries to the project Vinos sin Fronteras and for their formidable hospitality.

For more information on the project "Around the world in 80 vineyards", just click on www.vinossinfronteras.org. Thanks also to our partners: J.F. Hillebrand, Oeneo Bouchage, You walk Wines, Koala The International, Dharma Wines, Winetourisminfrance.com. And to Verema.com for their support!