Happy Easter! This year, in addition to Easter, the 17th of April is World Malbec Day. World Malbec Day is celebrated every year on this date… this year it happens to coincide with Easter
World Malbec Day is an initiative promoted by “Wines of Argentina,” and was started in 2011. It is supported by several Argentine government departments.
On April 17, 1853, local officials in the Mendoza province approved the region’s first agronomy school, Quinta Normal and Agricultural School, which would study grapes for agricultural purposes. This is the reason this date was chosen by the “Wines of Argentina” organization as the day for World Malbec Day.
The Malbec grape is actually French in origin, but most Malbec today comes from Argentina — how come?
A french agricultural specialist, Michel Aimé Pouget, was teaching agricultural knowledge at the Qinta Normal de Santiago Institute in Chile in the 1840s. The institute imported various agricultural products, including grape vines, from France, to try growing in Chile. It’s believed that likely the Malbec grape arrived this way in Chile in the mid 1840s.
An Argentine man named Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was in exile in Chile at the time. An intellectual, activist, and writer, he took an interest in the agricultural institute. When he returned to Argentina, he proposed that a similar agricultural institute should be established in Argentina. A local government in the Mendoza region approved the establishment of the Quinta Normal and Agricultural School on the 17th of April, 1853. Authorities persuaded Michel Aimé Pouget to make the move from Chile to Argentina to get the new school set up and run it. Among other activities, it would study and promote grapes for wine in Argentina. The Malbec cuttings probably arrived with Pouget from Chile.
The Malbec grape did very well in Argentina — even better than it did in Chile, or France. And — as luck would have it, it was brought to Chile and Argentina just in time, because in 1863, the phylloxera plague hit France, destroying grape vines there.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento went on to become president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874.
Seventy-five percent of the Malbec wine in the world comes from Argentina.
In Argentina, the three main growing regions are San Juan, Salta, and Mendoza, with Mendoza being the largest region by far — being home to 85 percent of Argentina’s Malbec plantings.
In France, the grape is known by the name of “cot,” and is cultivated in Cahors in the south-west of the country, and in the Loire. If a French wine says “Cahors” on the label, it is made from Malbec grapes.
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