What to drink this week

Uruguay Harry Eyres samples some rustic yet elegant South American wines

The vineyards of Uruguay, South America’s fourth largest wine-producing country, are on roughly the same latitude as the much better known ones of Chile, far to the west. Uniquely in South America, they are influenced by the Atlantic, which cools the climate somewhat. Uruguayan wines are perhaps more elegant than those of neighbouring Argentina, grown in a hotter and more extreme and continental climate. They’re well worth sampling.

Why you should be drinking them

Uruguay has a number of points of interest. It is a country of small-scale agriculture, where the worst horrors of modern industrial farming are largely absent. Most vineyards are also small and many are organic. The country’s most-planted grape is an unusual, even eccentric one, the Tannat of Madiran from southwest France. This is a good talking point in a world dominated by half a dozen varieties.

What to drink

Giménez Méndez 100 Años Tannat 2013 (below, £11.50; www.bbr.com) manages to be both faintly rustic and elegant at the same time. It’s gamey and leathery on the nose, then tastes rather like decent minor Bordeaux. De Lucca Tannat Cuatro Piedras 2015 (£8.50; www.thewine society.com) is a remarkable bargain. Deep in colour with dense, brambly fruit on the nose, it has big but lush tannins and a certain wildness on the palate—a Poldark of a wine, perhaps? Tannat isn’t the only unusual grape grown in Uruguay: Petit Verdot, the fourth Bordeaux variety, seems to do well in these parts and Atlántico Sur San José Petit Verdot 2015 (£9.95; www.thewinesociety.com) is appetisingly fresh and elegant, with a hint of mint as well as blackcurrant.