Cafayate Torróntes 2024 | Salta | Argentina

The story starts in 1850, when Flavio Lema Niño began making wine in Cafayate and planted the area's first white vines. Among them, as a trial, the first Torrontés in the Calchaquí Valleys. That experiment ended up defining the wine identity of Salta.

The winery, then called La Florida, remained in Lema Niño hands until 1938, when it was bought by Arnaldo Benito Etchart. Of his four children only one went into wine: Arnaldo Etchart, who expanded the house and steered it decisively towards Cafayate, Torrontés and high-altitude wines.

The vineyards lie above 1,750 metres, on sandy alluvial soils from the Calchaquí river, in an arid area with more than three hundred days of sun a year. There the temperature swings by up to twenty degrees between midday and dawn, which is what allows aroma to build without losing acidity. For decades the property belonged to the French group Pernod Ricard.