Uruguay joins the Wine League

For the last couple of years, Argentina has been hailed as the new ‘New world’ in terms of wine production.  The country now has a 500 million dollar export industry.

Uruguay however, does not normally find its way onto the wine pages of anything, but is in fact the fourth most important wine producer in Latin America, after Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

Argentina is famed for its Malbec; Uruguay for its Tannat. This grape now accounts for 40% of the country’s production of wine.  Like the Malbec grape before it, Tannat also hails from France was and introduced into Uruguay in the 19th century.
In 2008 the Uruguayan wine export industry was worth 10.6 million dollars. This fell by half a year later, due to the global financial crisis. Economic recovery is now well under way here and the Tannat grape is being relied upon to bring Uruguay into the exquisite signature wine’ market.

This tiny country of only 3.4 million inhabitants is emerging as a force to be reckoned with in the wine production stakes and its bigger neighbours Argentina and Brazil cannot afford to rest easy.