Bolivia

Bolivia grows wine higher than anywhere else. The vineyards run from about 1,600 metres to over 2,900, where the air is thin, the ultraviolet light is fierce and the day to night swing is enormous. The vine answers by building thick skins and holding its acid, so the reds are deeply coloured and firm and the whites stay sharp in a latitude that should not allow it.

Tarija in the far south holds the large majority of the vineyard, and the Valle de la Concepción is its centre. The Cinti valley in Chuquisaca is the older and stranger one. There the vines are trained up molle and pepper trees and left to climb, some of them a century old and ungrafted, and the fruit is picked from ladders.

Singani is the reason most of the crop exists. It is a spirit distilled from Muscat of Alexandria, and its designation of origin fixes both the grape and the altitude: the fruit must be grown above 1,600 metres. That makes it the only spirit in the world defined by how high its vineyard sits.

The wine half is small, young and export minded. Tannat does very well, which it also does in Uruguay, and Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah fill out the reds. Bolivia's problem is not quality but volume and distance to a port.