Why Mendoza wine matters to the world

Seven in ten Argentine vineyards

As of December 31, 2024, Argentina had 199,946 hectares of vines, according to the National Wine Institute (INV). Of those, 142,785 are in Mendoza: 71.4% of the total. No other province comes close. Whenever someone, anywhere in the world, opens a bottle of Argentine wine, chances are it was born in this province of dry climate, snowmelt irrigation and vineyards at the foot of the Andes.

Malbec: a French grape that found its home

Malbec comes from southwest France, around Cahors, but its great modern story was written in Argentina. Today it is the country's most planted variety: 47,064 hectares, 23.5% of the whole national vineyard. Mendoza holds 39,856 of those hectares — 84.7% of Argentine Malbec. The Uco Valley and the province's central zone alone account for 63.1% of all the Malbec in the country.

Its symbolic date is April 17. On that day in 1853, the project for an agricultural Quinta Normal promoted by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was presented in Mendoza, with French agronomist Michel Aimé Pouget, who is credited with bringing Malbec to the country. In 2011, Wines of Argentina chose that date to create Malbec World Day, now celebrated in dozens of cities around the world.

A wine that travels the world

In 2024, 51.4% of Malbec wines were exported. Varietal Malbec reached 119 countries, with the United Kingdom (36.5%) and the United States (23.2%) as the main destinations, followed by Brazil, Canada and Mexico. Malbec and its blends make up 72.5% of the volume of varietal wines Argentina exports: for much of the world, Malbec simply is Argentine wine.

Protected origin: the country's first DOC

Mendoza was also a pioneer in protecting its origin. Luján de Cuyo holds Argentina's first Denominación de Origen Controlada: local wineries pushed for it in 1989, the first wine was certified in 1991, and the INV made it official in 2005. It is the same kind of recognition that Bordeaux or Rioja enjoy, applied to the Malbec of one Mendoza department. We cover it in detail on our Luján de Cuyo page.

Wineries at the top of the world ranking

The World's Best Vineyards ranking picks the world's best vineyards to visit every year, and Mendoza shows up again and again. Zuccardi Valle de Uco was number one in 2019, 2020 and 2021, and Catena Zapata, in Agrelo, took the top spot in 2023. The 2025 edition has six Mendoza wineries in the top 50: Durigutti (11), Salentein (12), El Enemigo (17), Riccitelli (29), Kaiken (36) and Viña Cobos (49).

Several of them have their own card — with address, opening times and directions — on our pages of wineries to visit in Agrelo, Luján de Cuyo and the Uco Valley.

A world wine capital

Since 2005, Mendoza has been part of the Great Wine Capitals network, which brings together the great wine cities such as Bordeaux, Porto and Bilbao-Rioja, and it hosted the network's annual meetings in 2006 and 2014. For wine tourism, that means wineries ready to welcome visitors, with tastings, restaurants among the vines and the Andes always in the background.

Experience it without traveling

If you want to understand why Mendoza Malbec is different, the best way is to make it yourself. In LagarLab, Agrelo is one of the two free estates: the sugar, acidity and pH of its harvest come preloaded, and you make the same decisions a winemaker makes in the cellar.

Sources

• INV: Malbec report 2025 (data as of 12/31/2024, in Spanish)
• Government of Mendoza: Vendimia 2025 economic dossier (in Spanish)
• The World's 50 Best Vineyards 2025
• La Nación: Catena Zapata, best vineyard in the world 2023 (in Spanish)
• Argentina's Foreign Ministry: Malbec World Day
• Government of Mendoza: Great Wine Capitals (in Spanish)
• Mercado: the first Malbec with DOC Luján de Cuyo (in Spanish)