Uruguay Annual Report: As Zesty Albariño Rises, Tannat Embraces Its Fresh Side

More than a quarter of the 264 wines we rated from Uruguay this year were varietal tannats, an ugly duckling of sorts in the wine world today when compared with more easily drinkable reds yet perfectly suited to Uruguay’s profile: a meat-eater’s paradise that demands wines with powerhouse tannins and deep color to go along with all those juicy, well-roasted steaks.

Tannats aren’t always as iron-fisted as they used to be, hitting you over the head with throat-cutting tannins, high alcohol, overripe fruit and an oaky reverb. Instead, the latest iterations in Uruguay fit in nicely with the growing trend in the southern hemisphere of making fresher wines that reflect the cool Atlantic coastal climate.

If Uruguayan wines comprised their own orchestra, you would find these sinewy tannats and tannat-based blends holding down the percussion and brass sections with their rhythm and power, but the music and melody of Uruguayan wines can really be found in the strings and woodwinds sections. This is where grapes like albariño reside. The winemakers we talked to agreed that albariño is the up-and-coming varietal in the country. It is also a grape that adapts well to Uruguay's wet, maritime climate.

"We always run out of it, and people just love it," said Juan Pablo Bouza of the Montevideo-based Bodega Bouza, which releases albariño every year during the first week of August as a nod to the Fiesta del Albariño in Galicia, Spain, and “International Albariño Day” on Aug. 1. The Bouza family has Galician heritage, and their winery arguably introduced albariño to Uruguay, if not all of Latin America.

Eduardo Boido, the chief winemaker at Bodega Bouza, said they first planted albariño in 2001. “We thought it would be great to have it in Uruguay because we have a wet and cool oceanic climate similar to Galicia,” he said. Their Bouza Albariño Montevideo 2021 is rendered in a fresh, vibrant style with a deliciously saline smack of flavor that contrasts with its tangy white pepper and white and green limy fruit, expressing a sharpened roundness and verve from the cool Atlantic.

Santiago Deicas of Bodega Familia Deicas in Uruguay’s main wine region, Canelones, which is just north of Uruguay’s coastal capital, Montevideo, also sees a growing future for albariño, calling it "super sexy in the wine market.”

"I see people really getting excited about albariño… In Galicia, it runs out every year. There is not enough extremely high-quality albariño," he said, adding that Uruguay is a solid alternative for premium albariño wines for those who can’t get their hands on the Galician product.

 But Familia Deicas, as one of Uruguay’s first wine exporters, is first and foremost focused on producing quality tannats, and it has recently turned toward making finer, more polished and drinkable versions.

THE PROMISE OF 2020: Santiago Deicas of Bodega Familia Deicas on the 2020 vintage and how Familia Deicas makes its tannat wines.

"Twenty-five years ago, one of our tannats was reviewed as ‘The Beast,’ the macho wine, and we were proud of it," Deicas said. But his pleasure in making such a wine faded as consumer tastes evolved away from the muscular style. Even if such wines were well made, consumers would not be drinking a second glass.

Over the last decade or so, Familia Deicas and other Uruguayan winemakers have begun to pay more attention to taming the tannins of the tannat grape to bring out the juiciness of the fruit, rather than just focusing on structure and color. Deicas told us that tannat needs a certain amount of moisture to keep the balance and freshness in the vineyard.

“Tannat is very different and special. If tannat feels dryness for a long period in the ripening season, it blocks the interchange between the vine and the grape, and it is not reversible, not like many other grapes,” he said. The result might be a wine with a high sugar level with overripe fruit, which occurs before phenolic ripeness sets in.

To make more drinkable tannat wines, Deicas stressed the importance of focusing on skin ripeness rather than seed ripeness to avoid ending up with jammy wines. In this way, he said, the flavors ripen in tandem with the wine’s structure. To that end, he began harvesting earlier and now uses what he calls the "espresso method” of winemaking.

"In tannat, what we do is like making an espresso. It’s high temperature, high maceration in a short amount of the time. It is not thermal vinification, it’s natural fermentation but the temperature is as high as the yeast can tolerate,” he said.

By doing this, Deicas aims to get fresher wines and extract more refined, sweeter tannins from the skins with the solids being racked off in the middle of fermentation before the alcohol level goes up. His Deicas Tannat Canelones Massimo Deicas Cru 2020 shows this in full, expressing an extra silky aspect, with flavorful, juicy dark fruit and a restrained, voluptuous feel.

But Deicas doesn’t solely depend on his espresso method and keeps his mind open to other possibilities. “We have good results with this espresso method, but also conduct other research,” he said when talking about the more popular alternative – what he called the “cold brew” approach, with gentle, low-temperatures and long maceration, taking up to two months. “For this, we need to get the seed ripened at the same time of the skin without over-ripeness of flavors, and we have only some terroirs that achieve this with tannat... It takes more effort in vineyard and terroir selection.”

Deicas also pointed out that he doesn't like carbonic maceration to soften the tannins because this leads to aromas masking the natural expressions of the grape and terroir.

A few other producers nailed it this year in making fresher, Atlantic-style tannats that mirror Uruguay’s cooler climate, while also retaining a sense of place in the wines. The well-established producer Pisano, from Progreso, which is between Montevideo and Canelones to the north, caught our eye with its Pisano Progreso Arretxea Grand Reserva 2015 – a highly drinkable tannat-based red hallmarked by nuance and elegance. We love the pure, pristine fruit with subtle complexity and the firm, polished tannins that evenly spread out across the palate. While the tannins are tight and well-presented, they are never imposing or chewy.

Meanwhile, the albariño Deicas makes comes from two distinctive vineyards – one in Juanico, in Canelones, and the other from Garzon, in Maldonado, in the southeast of the country next to Punta del Este. Both vineyards are close to the coast but with different soils, and each highlights the affinity albariño has for oceanic freshness and aromatics.

Deicas said the U.S. market – one of the biggest for albariño wines globally – is starting to pay more attention to albarino’s growth in the southern hemisphere. "The U.S. recognizes it,” he said. “Today, albariño is getting more planted, not only in Uruguay but also in our neighbor, Argentina. In this case, Uruguay is setting a standard.” [Uruguay’s National Institute of Vitiviniculture does not keep export statistics by varietal, only by the categories “red,” “white,” “claret,” “rosé.” The statistics suggest that the U.S. is a bigger market for Uruguay’s premium wines, while the top export markets for Uruguayan wine, Brazil and Russia, buy mostly cheaper stock.]

Despite growing in popularity, albariño comprises fewer than 100 hectares of vineyards in Uruguay, compared with tannat’s more than 1,600 hectares. But with a few leading producers, such as Bodega Bouza, Bodega Garzon, and Bodega Oceanica Jose Ignacio, doubling down on premium-quality offerings, the future of premium Uruguayan albariño looks as bright and zingy as the taste of the wines. The Bodega Garzón Albariño Garzón Single Vineyard 2021 and Bodega Garzón Albariño Garzón Petit Clos Block #27 2021 are among the top examples of albariño in the Maldonado region, where new vineyards are blossoming as new producers move in.

According to Christian Wylie, managing director of the Maldonado-based Bodega Garzon, more of the industry is moving east to the Atlantic, with 20 producers now operating in the Maldonado region, out of about 200 nationwide.

Wylie said that while sauvignon blanc grown in the region is known for its on-point typicity, albariño is the door-opener to Uruguay’s unique gastronomical world. Bodega Garzon’s albariños pair seamlessly with ceviche or sashimi, showing perfumed white fruit and blossoms with taut freshness, purity and texture – characteristics that are especially notable in the 2021 vintage.

"2021 was rainy. It was a vintage that tested the terroir and skills, but the water was quickly drained in our granitic vineyard,” Wylie said. “There was a lot of rain in February, and we could see the albariño's tolerance of humidity, just like in Galicia. We were surprised to find how balanced it was, with one degree lower alcohol. You could feel the acidity with less tropical fruit but more white fruit and minerality.”

Boido, the Bouza winemaker, considers 2021 a good vintage in respect to the development of the grapes, with some rain falling at the beginning of the harvest. "It was hard for riesling, so we didn't harvest it, but we had very good albariño and chardonnay,” he said. “It was a long harvest for the reds, where we started early and finished late, especially with merlot and tempranillo.”

Rain, which falls to the tune of 1,100-1,200 millimeters a year in Uruguay’s grape-growing regions, is a crucial factor that weighs on the quality and final style of the wine. "The grapes that need a dry climate don't quite succeed here," Wylie said.

It also depends on the timing of the rainfall and how well the terroir drains the water. At Bodega Garzon, the ancient, decomposed granitic soil on the slopes provides excellent drainage, which gives what Wylie calls "a catch-22 terroir” – with so much rain slipping away, they often need to turn to irrigation.

Despite the challenges, Bodega Garzon still gave us the highest-rated wine from this report: the Bodega Garzón Garzón Balasto 2020. This is a barrel sample at its embryonic stage with a deep and unfathomable nose full of stones, tarry fruit and flowers. It’s also charged with powerful and chalky tannins on the palate. Wylie considers Balasto to be Bodega Garzon’s “iconic” blend, comprising the best-parcel tannat, cabernet franc and petit verdot. Like everyone else we talked with, Wylie raved about the 2020 vintage, calling it “textbook” for the red.

"Everyone talks about 2020 as one of the best vintages in history. It was fantastic for petit verdot. We had excellent tannat and Chinon-style cabernet franc,” Wylie said.

For 2019, things were a little more complicated and challenging with rain, especially in the east. "2019 was a very cool year in Maldonado,” Wylie said. “It rained before the harvest in December and toward the end of March; that's why we did not release Balasto” for the first time ever.

On the bright side, "sophistication" was a quality that went hand in hand with 2019’s rainier spring and summer, according to Deicas. The reds from 2019 were slightly leaner and less concentrated, but those vintners with more accommodating terroirs who worked hard in the vineyard to control the vigor of vines and carefully selected their grapes managed to make fresh and refined reds, with juicy and crunchy fruit on the palate and lower alcohol levels.

But we must point out that there were still plenty of red wines that smacked of cooked, overripe fruit,  with high alcohol and an overextracted personality. A few marselans suffered from stewed, bruised fruit. Some simple tannats also had to wrestle with green, granular tannins, which we suspect came from higher yields.

There were also plenty of winemakers clinging to “old recipe” offerings that, rather than burnishing legacies of any particular wine or bodega, reminded us that too much oak, along with pitiful fruit intensity, are characteristics best left in the past. Some winemakers also tried so hard to make whites with creamy palates that they ended up too ripe, leesy and old-fashioned, sacrificing freshness, purity and tension. A few were even nutty and oxidative. On the upside, we also found some outstanding examples of pinot noirs, mostly coming from a few reputable names such as Bodega Garzon, Deicas and Bouza.

While Uruguayan wines have come a long way in terms of quality in the last few years, we still can’t help but expect more – especially considering that we gave only 19 wines ratings of 93 points or higher for this report, with many of the top wines coming from a few well-known, and consistent, producers. Considering that this is just our third annual report on Uruguay, our journey toward discovering more of its outstanding wines has barely begun. Let’s hope the country’s winemakers can help shine a light on our path.

– Zekun Shuai, Senior Editor