Local heroes

Uruguay’s climate is markedly different to those of its better-known neighbouring wine countries, Argentina and Chile. With annual rainfall averaging over 1100mm, and a mild Atlantic-influenced climate, Uruguay has far more in common climatically with somewhere like Bordeaux or Galicia than many of its New World counterparts.

This also means it has always taken a very different direction when it comes to grape varieties. In its earlier history as a wine country, hardy hybrid vines, as well as productive Ugni Blanc and Moscatel de Hamburgo, were among the most widely planted and easiest to cultivate across the wine regions.

There was, however, a nobler grape variety that also thrived in those early days of viticulture: Tannat. With its thick skin, it proved well adapted to Uruguay’s humidity and variable rainfall and thrived throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries to become Uruguay’s champion variety today.

The quality revolution of the late 20th century brought a major reconversion of Uruguay’s vineyards. The creation of INAVI in 1987 helped usher in a new era of fine-wine production, with many old hybrids pulled out and replaced by Vitis vinifera varieties.

But rather than narrowing the palette, Uruguay has increasingly become a wine country with a wide range of styles and varieties to explore.

Tannat

When Basque immigrant Pascual Harriague introduced Tannat into Uruguay around 1870, the vines arrived via Concordia in neighbouring Argentina, alongside a handful of other varieties. Harriague quickly saw the potential in Tannat: a grape that could withstand the rains and humid conditions of the climate and still produce generous yields of deeply coloured fruit, giving wines of colour, concentration, tannin and acidity.

Even in those early winemaking days of the 19th century, Harriague and Uruguay’s Tannat began to win serious international acclaim, including recognition at exhibitions in Barcelona and Paris at the end of the 1880s.

That growing recognition was part of the reason other vignerons began planting Tannat more widely across the different wine regions, and it was soon cultivated in pockets from north to south. Not only was Tannat celebrated for its consistency through Uruguay’s variable vintages, but it also proved a particularly good match for the country’s meat-loving diet.

Today Tannat remains Uruguay’s most-planted grape, with more than 1,500 hectares and over a quarter of the national vineyard. With more than a century of experience cultivating it, Uruguay has undoubtedly learned how to tame this tannic and robust variety. That might mean blending it with softer grapes such as Merlot or even aromatic Viognier, but increasingly it comes down to more precise viticulture, picking decisions and gentler winemaking techniques.

In Uruguay today you can expect Tannat of all different characters, from lighter, unoaked and juicy expressions, as exemplified by producers such as Pablo Fallabrino and Viña Edén, to the more structured styles aged for years in oak, such as the top wines of the Pisano family.

There are also rosé wines made from Tannat, sparkling examples, fortified wines and even white Tannat, produced as a blanc de noir. One grape, it turns out, can have rather a lot of personalities.

Uruguay continues to defy convention with its champion variety and show that, after all these years together, country and grape understand each other rather well.

Albariño

It wasn’t until 2001 that the first vines of Albariño were planted in Uruguay, by the Bouza family as an homage to their Galician roots. They planted an experimental hectare at Las Violetas in Canelones and produced their first vintage in 2004.

But since those early vintages, Albariño has grown remarkably quickly and been planted around the country to become one of Uruguay’s leading fine-wine white varieties and certainly one of its most exciting.

Well suited to the Atlantic climate, Albariño has thrived in the coastal wine regions of Canelones and Maldonado in particular. On the heavier sedimentary and clay-rich soils of Canelones it can offer wines of greater breadth and fleshier fruit, while on the poorer, rocky and granitic-influenced soils of Maldonado it often shows more verve, tension and salinity.

There is consequently a wide range of expressions in Uruguay today, from easy-drinking everyday Albariños to some of the country’s most serious and collectable white wines.

And the story is far from finished. Albariño continues to be planted widely as part of the country’s current wave of vineyard renewal, meaning there are likely to be many more styles and regions to discover in the years ahead.