The locals were fond of calling the Tacuil, in the Calchaquí Valley of northwestern Argentina, Lugar de Descanso de Dios—the place where God rests. From the top of the ridge, it suddenly opened below us, an oasis in a wilderness of rock, a bowl of greenery enclosed by baked mountains.
Orderly rows of vines, full-leaved in the Argentine autumn, spread across the valley floor. Some sense of peaceful solitude seemed to pass through, like a breeze ruffling the willow trees. I don’t know where God was heading when he paused here, but it would have been strange if he had not been tempted to stay.
This is a story of gauchos, those tough, no-nonsense cowboys of the Argentine steppe, mountains, a Spanish governor, and Salta, Argentina’s outback. This sprawling province is a place of savage beauty and vast skies. It is also a story of wines, some of the finest being made in South America, which have challenged the parameters of what is possible in wine-making. But the story starts, as so many do in Argentina, with a road, the Ruta 40.
To Argentines it is simply known as La Cuarenta, the 40. Running north to south, shadowing the Andes through some of Salta’s most spectacular landscapes, it is the kind of road that makes people want to run away, to find a new life out there beneath the promise of those endless skies. My own journey was more modest. With my driver, Martin, his cheeks bulging with coca leaves, I headed south in a four-by-four on the Forty to discover the unique wines of Salta.
Argentina is the seventh-largest producer of wine in the world. Fifty years ago, most Argentinean wine was Malbec from Mendoza, big robust reds, most consumed locally, usually paired with steaks the size of encyclopedias. But the last 30 years has seen a growing sophistication in Argentinean wine as vineyards began to pay more attention to other varietals, to blends, to aging in French oak, to quality.
As understanding of Argentinean wines has developed, wine buffs have begun to realize there is another wine region in Argentina: Salta, some hundreds of miles to the north of Mendoza, where the grapes are grown at an altitude that would make most French producers dizzy.
Europe’s highest vineyards are in Visperterminen, Switzerland, where the exotic Heida grapes are grown at 3,800 feet, deemed by many to be the limit to successful viticulture. But in Salta, they have been making beautiful wines in vineyards at up to 10,200 feet since the Jesuits made communion wine here in the 16th century.
It is the kind of road that makes people want to run away, to find a new life out there beneath the promise of those endless skies.
South of the city of Salta, we climbed the spectacular Bishop’s Slope, the road swinging back and forth in a series of hairpins to the Paseo Pedro Molina. Beyond we fell into another world, the wide Calchaquí Valley. Running north and south, it follows the grain of the Andes for more than 250 miles, sheltered between two mighty ranges. Calchaquí is Salta’s wine country.
At Bodega Tacuil, I found Raúl Dávalos Goytia on a shady terrace with an assembly of bottles for a midday tasting, accompanied by olives and slivers of rustic bread. An energetic man in his 40s and a leading wine-maker, Dávalos Goytia is a descendant of Nicolás Severo de Isasmendi, an early 19th-century royalist governor of the province.
Salta is the territory of the gauchos. They were not keen on royalist governors. In May 1810, they rode into the town of Salta to overthrow Isasmendi. Promising to forgo political ambition, the governor was able to negotiate some gardening leave. While the gauchos were busy dancing with their handkerchiefs to the sound of swirling accordions, he took the road south, the old Inca road that would become the Ruta 40, to his remote estancia in the Calchaquí Valley. There he tended his vines and, aided by his influential daughter, Ascensión, began to make wine as a commercial enterprise, producing up to 2,906 gallons a year.
The family has been finessing the production of wine in Calchaquí ever since; Ascensión was Dávalos Goytia’s great-great-grandmother. As I sampled the different vintages produced at Bodega Tacuil, in the shade of a carob tree as wide as a house, Dávalos Goytia explained what makes the Salta wines so distinctive.
As in many wine regions, the soil of Calchaquí is stony; vines love good drainage. As there is very little rain, vineyard managers use drip irrigation so they are in control of the amount and timing of the watering. Then there is the sun—the valley gets around 340 days of it a year. In such high, clear air, the intensity of the rays means the grapes achieve an optimal ripeness. Finally, there is the difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures of up to 40 degrees, which produces thicker skins. The grapes retain more of their nutrients and their flavors, and develop acidity to counteract the high sugar content. Salta wines are big and complex—intense, tannic, full-bodied, but also somehow fresh, especially when consumed, as the Argentines do, slightly chilled.
Many wineries in the Calchaquí Valley double as small boutique hotels paired with sophisticated restaurants. In Molinos, I lunched in the courtyard of Governor Isasmendi’s quirky 19th-century house, now a charming inn, all painted wood and whitewashed adobe with four-poster beds and several staff members who might have been here since the 19th century. The governor is buried just across the road in the church.
On the outskirts of Salta, I stayed at the House of Jasmines, a stylish ranch house with a Western vibe, owned until recently by the actor Robert Duvall. In Cafayate, the central hub of Salta wine-making, Patios de Cafayate is another option, a colonial property dating from 1740. It is the kind of place where you would ideally arrive on a lathered horse to be handed a glass of white Torrontés, a billet-doux from a paramour in town, and an urgent telegram from the president.
But my favorite was Bodega Colomé, the oldest continually producing vineyard in Argentina, which produces the region’s best wines from its highest vineyards. The property is an outpost of almond-colored buildings, gardens of cactus and lavender, a courtyard surrounded by spacious rooms, a parlor of artwork and books and deep leather chairs, a contemporary-art gallery, and a restaurant with a wide, cobbled terrace beneath a vast molle tree overlooking vines.
Founded by our old friend Governor Isasmendi in 1831, Bodega Colomé was bought by Swiss businessman Donald Hess in 2001. Though he had a background in beer and bottled water, he had fallen in love with wine-making and the Calchaquí Valley, and he spent part of every year at Colomé until his death, in 2023. From a rustic operation, where they still produced their vintages in earthenware jars, Hess transformed Colomé into a world-class winery headed by French wine-maker Thibaut Delmotte.
One afternoon, after visiting the 10-acre St. Jacoba plot, planted by Ascensión two centuries ago, I returned to Colomé as dusk was gathering among the vines. Wine was being served on the terrace. I sat with chef Patricia Courtois, enjoying a glass of Pinot Noir. “Time here has another measure,” Courtois said. “Just as wine does.”
Darkness fell as aromas from the kitchen were drifting across the terrace. Stars appeared among the long, feathery limbs of the molle tree. An owl was hooting somewhere. I don’t know if God ever rested at Colomé. But if he did, surely he might have been tempted to stay. Dinner was superb, and the wines divine.
This trip was organized by Abercrombie & Kent, which specializes in tailor-made trips throughout Argentina. A similar itinerary that includes flights, transfers, drivers, guides, and accommodations begins at $10,000 per person
Stanley Stewart, a journalist based in Dorset, U.K., and Rome, is a contributing editor at Condé Nast Traveler and a regular contributor to The Sunday Times of London. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and his most recent book is In the Empire of Genghis Khan