Terrazas de los Andes

Pioneering spirit and great pleasure

The history of Terrazas de los Andes is one of adventurers and pioneers. Back at the start of the 1990s, when Argentina was still unknown on the world stage as a wine country, Frenchman Jean-Pierre Thibault recognised the huge potential lying untapped in the beautiful scenery of Mendoza. Through his connections with Moët & Chandon, he was able to get in touch with Hervé Birnie-Scott, a 26-year-old French agronomist, oenologist and expert in cool-climate viticulture. 

Birnie-Scott sought to redefine Argentine wine style, and to do that he had to go where nobody had gone before: he planted the Caicayen vineyard above 1,050 meters in altitude. A major gamble. Vines had never been planted at this altitude before, nobody knew if they could survive the winter.

Some years later, and the results were astounding. Thibault and Birnie-Scott decided to risk everything and bought up three vineyards in the Uco Valley (Los Castaños, El Pedregal and El Yaima). And with that, "Terrazas de los Andes" was born. In under a generation, Birnie-Scott and the Terrazas team transformed viticulture in Mendoza. Today, Terrazas is still the gold standard for viticulture in Argentina, something also reflected in the consistently great accolades from international critics.

Today, Terrazas manages over 220 single parcels, all of which are segmented separately into 280 sub-blocks, or "micro-terroirs". From this diverse range, wines are blended specifically for elegance, crispness and complexity.