Peru

Peru had the first vineyard and the first wine industry on the continent. Cuttings arrived with the Spanish in the 1540s, the valleys around Ica and Moquegua were planted, and by 1600 Peru was exporting wine. Spain suppressed the trade to protect its own, an earthquake wrecked Pisco in 1687, and the industry never recovered its lead. Chile and Argentina took it. The figure above is the whole vineyard. Most of it is table grapes and pisco fruit, and table wine takes a small share of it.

What survived is pisco. It is a grape spirit distilled from wine, and the rule that defines it is the absence of everything else: no water may be added after distillation, so the spirit comes off the still at drinking strength and rests, and nothing is aged in wood. The Denominación de Origen dates from 1991 and covers five coastal departments.

Eight grapes are allowed for pisco. Quebranta, Negra Criolla, Mollar and Uvina are the non aromatic ones; Italia, Moscatel, Albilla and Torontel are the aromatic ones. Quebranta is the workhorse and a Peruvian grape in its own right, a seedling of Listan Prieto crossed with Muscat that appeared here and nowhere else.

Table wine is the smaller business and mostly serves the domestic market. The vineyards sit in river valleys cutting through one of the driest deserts on earth, and every one of them is irrigated. Ica, Pisco and Chincha are the names to know.