Top Argentine Wines from Jujuy - Yacoraite
- adrianlatimer61
- 6 hours ago
- 7 min read
Jujuy is the region of a million photos, from the crazily coloured chevroned mountains of Hornocal to the turquoise and glistening white Salt Plains next to Bolivia, in the Atacama Desert. The play of light on the ever-changing palette of the Andes would drive Claude Monet to distraction. It is beyond spectacular, the textures, shade and brilliance shifting at every bend in the road. Throw in llamas and guanaco (in the cactus-strewn fields, or the wool shop or, if they are unlucky, on your plate) and raptors soaring above on endless wings; it’s a feast for the eyes and the senses.
But if the tourism is well known (but as yet mercifully not overdone), the local wine is not. It is higher and much younger and smaller than Salta to the south, and, if anything, the backdrop to the few vineyards is even more stunning, technicolour mountains of three or four thousand metres, some of them seemingly splashed with blood by the ancient Gods. And indeed, the cactus fields and quebredas (canyons) of the Andes abound with memories from Inca mythology, and Pacha Mama, the spirt of the Earth. Nature is omnipresent and omnipotent up here.
As for Jujuy as a wine region, things are advancing apace – since our first visit 3 years ago there are now regular signs on the road for the Rutas del Vino listing the nearby wineries and you might even find a bottle or two in the shops, but there are no large domaines, tasting rooms or visiting centres. It’s still small scale and somewhat backwards, and, in a sense, all the better for it.
The town of Tilcara is the hub, tucked into the valley between the Devil’s Throat (where the cliffs are streaked with veins of blue and purple) and the Pucara, restored Inca remains that nestle between the cacti. The Rio Grande flows past, this year almost a river after all the rain, last time just a few narrow channels sidling through a vast bed of dried terracotta mud. But this is the Humahuaca Valley, home to all the vineyards and agriculture, corn fields alternating with goat pastures, dotted with simple adobe huts, square buildings of mud bricks and what look like straw rooves. We even saw the local fishing competition, kids standing in the calf-deep river with sticks as rods, a plastic water bottle serving as recipient for the poor minnow-sized fish.
It’s an incongruous landscape, a desert for 8 months of the year outside the Christmas wet season, and yet as you drive up the valley you cross dry riverbed after dry riverbed, some a couple of hundred metres wide with just a trickle of water carving through the sand here and there. Where is the force of water that has caused such monumental erosion?
Tilcara’s best restaurant is El Nuevo Progresso, a place for vibrant local art and cuisine, llama streaks, corn dishes and goat’s cheese. It’s as colourful as the scenery around it and remarkably good value. On our first visit we asked for the best local Malbec and were served the Mallku from Yacoraite, top stuff for 25 euros. It was less fruit forward than the wines from Mendoza down south, and despite the higher alcohol level it actually seemed more elegant, with an interesting herbal freshness underpinning it. We were so impressed that we tried to find it on the web and then in real life, but even though we drove up and down the road, it frustratingly eluded us.
Two years later and I had tracked them on Instagram and an improved website with, eureka, a map. We crossed another massive, empty reminder of a river and turned off, winding through high corn, a shepherdess with her hat and ancient, timeless face tending her goats. Cactus spiked up randomly and the land spread into symmetrical rows of vines inside an amphitheatre of mountains, one side a vivid red, alternatively gleaming in the sun or scowling threateningly under thunderclouds. If you need solace, just up the road at Uquia, just beyond a brilliant street mural stands a lovely sixteenth century church, a relic from the Conquistadores (and their Mission, or Criolla grapes, the precursor of what stretched out before me).
Yacoraite is a surprise. Suddenly in the middle of nowhere stands a remarkable modern building, built around a huge 5-pronged cactus and somehow part of the scenery, surrounded by lavender beds and flowers. It might seem a clash between the new and the old, the rich and the poor, but it works, there is no feeling of architectural arrogance or ego here. The attention to detail is impressive, the views from inside and from the balconies beautiful. The food, for this is a restaurant not a winery, also transcends the barren, rugged nowhereness of the place, local but sophisticated, delicious. The surprises continue inside with an underground cellar that you glimpse from a glass roof in the floor below your feet, a collection of startling chullos (Andean caps of llama, vicuna, alpaca, or sheep wool) spotlit between the rows of bottles. Again, a blend of the traditional and the new, native textiles draped over all the furniture.
I’ve already written about my reluctant but growing affection for high altitude Torrontes (daughter of that Criolla, plus Muscat, brought by the Spanish Jesuits just up the road), but nowadays there is a new twist. We are I guess old and old school, so the current trend for ‘natural’ and ‘orange’ wines largely passes us by, but up here orange Torrontés is seemingly all the rage.
Orange is a misnomer as it’s more of a golden yellow, with some Riesling mixed in. The smell is indeed floral, grapey and slightly spicey, Torrontes to the fore, but then it finishes bone dry with a touch of bitterness and tannin on the finish. As an aperitif in the sun, with a gentle 11.5% alcohol, matched with the local cheese and overlooking the ongoing cinema of light and shade across the peaks it was refreshing and hit the spot. Another surprise.
There is a young vines Cabernet Franc, its label flying with wings of a condor, which is Loire-like, and then the Mallku Malbec we first tasted, now the 2019, hitting 15% but still with that herbal restraint. The last wine in the collection is the Gran Corte, again flirting with Bordeaux varieties, I presume a bit more oak and a higher price tag. Sadly, it was not available for tasting by the glass and it was lunch and we had a car to drive so a full bottle was not possible. I’ll just have to wait a bit to let it mature in my cellar, but I suspect I might prefer the straight Malbec for the reasons described in my last post.
I wish I knew more about the origins of the winery, set up by a man from Salta in 2014, the restaurant here I think in 2023. Once again, a heroic project. As we left, we noticed the vines protected by tight vertical nets, whether against hail or the parrots I’m not sure, the grapes just changing colour, veraison in January. I think the well-known Lucas Niven is the winemaking guru and Yacoraite’s are the Jujuy wines that we have enjoyed the most.
Further down the road is Amanacer Andino, another wine that we have liked. They too have an orange wine which I’d like to sample, plus three reds, Malbec, Reserva Malbec and their Gran Reserva with the Bordeaux influence. This time we tried the 2019 of the two Malbecs and though I don’t know the vintage conditions, it seemed a little light on fruit and high on acidity, at this stage at least. The 2016 grand cru, with its imposing gold label certainly stood out, but had a lot of roast nuts, high toast oak and a slightly cooked/confit taste that reminded us of old school Rioja. As I’ve muttered, I’m not always a fan of the more souped-up Bordeaux blends and though this was undoubtedly good wine, it just felt like it was trying a bit too hard? But I guess it commands a higher price and sells, though so often I prefer the pure Malbecs which to me show off the savage mountain terroir to its best.
The wines of Jujuy deserve to be better known. Of course, the region is small and remote and has nothing to compare to the massive marketing machine in Mendoza, but some of the wines are good and cost less than Salta and a lot less than much of Mendoza. But not much is available in Europe. Wines of sunlight, not sunshine, with an added intensity from those long days of luminosity and cold mountain nights.
We drove home past the Quebreda de las Senoritas, where the locals tried to hide their gold from the Spanish invaders in the Canyon of 13 Curves, dying in the process, forever protected by Pacha Mama, the rocks turning orange-red as a result, oddly unhot even in direct sunshine. In the distance the wind whipped up the ubiquitous sand into thick clouds, the river lost in the maelstrom, the mountains appearing and disappearing.
A fitting finale.
Postscript - ‘The Wine in My Glass’
After some encouragement and a fair few blog posts, I published (Sept 2025) a book about my travels in the wine world - the people, places and, of course, wines. I am not a professional, so everything I say is objective and unbiased (so I can criticise when other journalists do not dare to do so for instance) and any profits will go to the Vendanges Solidaires association which was set up in 2016 to help winemakers who are in trouble after suffering the extreme weather conditions (frost, hail, fire, flood etc) which sadly are becoming ever more frequent: www.vendangessolidaires.com.
The book ranges from California to Sicily, via Salta, Jujuy and Patagonia in Argentina, Valtellina, Piemonte and Tuscany in Italy, Madeira and of course all over France (Burgundy, Chablis, Sancerre, Beaujolais, Bordeaux, the Rhone).
If you have found any pleasure and/or interest in this blog, I think you might enjoy it, especially as it has been brilliantly illustrated by Arabella Langlands-Perry who managed to juggle bringing up two young kids, helping run Maceo/Willi’s Wine Bar in Paris and producing artwork with an abundance of both talent and wit. Brava.
‘The Wine in My Glass – Tales of Wines, Winemakers and Places’
Published by The Medlar Press Limited, Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, autumn 2025. www.medlarpress.com      Â
Available from Medlar in UK, and/or from me in France or Willis Wine Bar in Paris.
Price UK Pounds 26 from Medlar or 35 Euros. All profits to charity.Â
