Torrontés

Torrontés is Argentina's signature white wine grape: an intensely aromatic variety that smells like a flower shop — rose, jasmine, orange blossom and fresh grapes, with the heady muscat-and-Gewurztraminer perfume of a sweet wine — yet finishes crisp, dry and refreshing on the palate. It reaches its finest expression in the high-altitude desert vineyards of Salta and the Cafayate valley in the country's far north-west, where vines are planted above 1,600 metres and some of the highest in the world. The contrast is its hallmark: a perfumed, exotic nose over a clean, lightly bitter, food-friendly body. Best drunk young and well chilled, it is Argentina's distinctive answer to the world's aromatic whites.