South American wine, and where to start with it

Most wine lists in Athens are Greek lists with a French section bolted on the end. That is not a criticism, it is just what the market drinks. What it means is that if you have never had an Argentine or a Chilean wine, there has been very little in this city pushing you to start.

Ours is roughly half Greek and half South American, and the second half is the part people skip because they do not know what any of it is. This is a short guide to reading it: the four regions that keep appearing, what altitude and latitude do to a wine, and which of them survives being put next to a charcoal grill.

Why a wine list has regions on it at all

A wine label that gives you a region is telling you about weather. That is nearly all it is telling you. Heat ripens grapes, which means more sugar, which means more alcohol and softer acid. Cold does the opposite, and altitude behaves like cold even when the country is hot, because the temperature falls the higher you go and it falls hardest overnight.

This matters more in South America than almost anywhere, because the continent runs from the subtropics to Patagonia and the Andes stand along the whole western edge of it. Two vineyards at the same latitude can be growing in completely different climates because one of them is a kilometre further up. The region on the label is doing real work.

Argentina: Mendoza, the Calchaqui Valley, Patagonia

Mendoza is the one people have heard of, and it sits in the rain shadow of the Andes, which means sun, dry air and irrigation from snowmelt. Wines from there tend to be dark, warm and generous, and they are the reason Argentina has the reputation it has. Big Game, on our red list, comes from there.

The Calchaqui Valley in the north is the extreme version. It is one of the highest wine regions in the world, and the vineyards sit far enough up that the days are fierce and the nights are cold. That gap is what keeps acidity in a grape that is otherwise getting a great deal of sun. Amalaya, on the white list, comes from that valley.

Patagonia is the opposite end of the country and the opposite argument: far south, cool, windy, with a long slow ripening season. Barda, from Bodega Chacra, is the Patagonian bottle on our red list, and it is the one to order if your idea of South American red is something heavy. It is not.

Chile: Maipo, Curico, and a country shaped like a strip

Chile is four thousand kilometres long and almost nowhere wide, with the Pacific on one side and the Andes on the other. The cooling comes from both directions, which is why a Chilean wine from a warm latitude can still taste fresh.

Maipo, just outside Santiago, is the classical region, the one that built the country's reputation for structured reds that age. Santa Rita Bougainville, on our list, is from there. Curico is further south and is where Miguel Torres established the Chilean arm of a Catalan wine family in the 1970s, which was the moment the modern Chilean industry started. Manso de Velasco comes from those vineyards.

On the white side, Viu Manent appears twice, in a Reserva and in the Secreto, and Torres Santa Digna is the third Chilean white. If you want to understand what Chile does that Argentina does not, drink a Chilean white next to an Argentine one. The Chilean will almost always be the tighter of the two.

What to drink with what, on this menu specifically

The problem this kitchen sets a wine list is that it runs a charcoal grill and a sushi counter at the same time. Those two want opposite things. A picanha off the coals wants tannin and weight, something with enough structure to stand against fat and smoke, which is where the Maipo and Mendoza reds earn their place on the menu.

Raw fish wants the reverse: acid, low oak, nothing that leaves a coating. The Chilean whites do that job, and so does the rose list, which is the genuinely underused part of the page. A rose is the one thing that can sit between a ceviche and a plate of ribs without embarrassing itself at either end.

If you are eating across the whole table, which is how most people eat here, order a white and a red rather than trying to find one bottle that does everything. It does not exist, and the attempt usually produces a wine that is wrong for both. And if nobody at the table wants wine at all, the bar list is the other half of this argument.

Why the Greek bottles are still there

About half the list is Greek, from Biblia Chora, Gerovassiliou, Gaia, Boutaris, Semeli, Thymiopoulos and others, and that is deliberate rather than defensive. Assyrtiko from Santorini and a Naoussa red are two of the most distinctive things Greece makes, and a restaurant in Athens that hid them behind an imported list would be making a strange point.

The kitchen is a confluence and so is the cellar. The interesting orders are usually the ones that cross: a Greek white with the Brazilian sushi, an Argentine red with something off the grill, and somebody at the table asking the floor team what to try. They will tell you, and they will not upsell you.