Once upon a time, a man sailed across the globe in search of a better life. He left the only village he had ever known, boarded a ship to a destination he could barely read the name of and docked nearly 7,000 miles and a hemisphere away in a new land. Everything around him had changed: the sea had become a vast muddy river, his emptying village had become a thriving city of the future and the mountains that had surrounded him — well, they simply weren’t there any more.
One thing, however, had not changed: the vines under his arm. Before leaving, he had snipped some cuttings from his ancestors’ vineyard and sneaked them on board. So on arrival in this new land, blinded by the modern city, he moved north until he found countryside, where he planted those vines. Poverty meant he had left home for ever, but wine meant he had brought a bit of home with him.
That was a story I first heard at Pisano, a five-generation winery run by three brothers in Progreso, 20 miles north of Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo (pisanowines.com). But although it was first told to me by Daniel Pisano — pointing to a photo of his Italian great-grandfather, Francesco, as he poured — I’ve heard the same story, and variations of it, across Uruguay in a decade of travel to South America’s second-smallest country.
Pisano, in Progreso, is run by a trio of brothers
Red wine, steak, tango: the South American holy trinity. Most people will think of Argentina as the continent’s natural paradise, followed by Chile if you swap the tango for another bottle of carmenere. But strike out from Buenos Aires across the River Plate to tiny, teardrop-shaped Uruguay, and you’ll find all three. While Argentina has ruled the malbec scene for decades, Uruguay’s wine industry is still bijou. “In most wineries you talk to the owner and hear amazing stories,” says Fabiana Bracco Bosca.
She would know — she’s a fifth-generation vintner whose great-grandparents carried their cuttings from Piedmont in Italy to Atlantida, a beach town 30 miles east of Montevideo. Today her winery, Bracco Bosca, is one of several bucolic vineyard stays springing up across Uruguay. In 2020, she built two modernist wood cabins in the middle of the vines: merlot on one side, moscatel the other, the Milky Way overhead. It’s so heavenly — peaceful, simple and undeniably Uruguayan — that I’ve stayed twice. The first time, I had dinner with Fabiana and her family. Her husband, Edison, grilled us an asado (barbecue) while she wielded the corkscrew. Syrah, petit verdot, claret — they were all wonderful, but the real star of the show was the tannat.
Tannat is an oddball grape. In its place of origin, Madiran in France, it’s usually blended with cabernets because its sky-high tannin content makes it bitter. But the Pisanos, the Braccos and their ilk didn’t have space for two under-arm bundles; everyone brought what they could. Soon they noticed that one grape in particular was adapting to Uruguay’s terrain. They called it Harriague, after the man who brought it over from the Basque Country (another major immigrant route), and Harriague (which was actually tannat) became Uruguay’s national grape. Over the decades, in a delicious triumph of the underdog, Uruguayan winemakers have teased gutsy-but-elegant reds out of rough-and-ready tannat. Unable to compete on price with Argentina, they blaze a trail on quality, innovation and joyful vineyard visits.
Bracco Bosca offers cabins with outdoor hot tubs surrounded by vines
That first night at Bracco Bosca, walking back through the vines to my cabin, I saw a shooting star cleave across the night sky. The next time I stayed — last March, on my now-annual visit — I sat in the sun drinking crisp clarete as they harvested around me, birds swooping down to nick a last few grapes off the vine.
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It’s that cat-in-the-sun contentment that makes Uruguay my favourite South American country: less bucket-list sightseeing, more bucket-list bliss. The easiest way to get there is by flying to Buenos Aires and crossing the River Plate (that muddy river the width of a sea) by hydrofoil. With apologies to my Buenos Aires-born mother, Montevideo is Lecce to Buenos Aires’ Milan: simpler, daintier, less highly strung. Follow the 15-mile shoreline out of town, as those immigrants did, and you’ll find a country where horses graze at the roadside, where “modern” architecture means art deco, and where one of the most taxing things to do is to hit the beach after an asado and let the waves sing you to sleep. Clearly all those Italians slung some dolce vita under their arms too.
Cerro del Toro is a fast-growing winery with a restaurant
Uruguay’s wineries double down on this feeling. Over the years I’ve stayed amid vines near the River Plate’s source at El Legado, a tiny vineyard in Carmelo, 150 miles northwest of Montevideo, where the Plate flashed silver (plata in Spanish) in the lurid orange sunset as I drove to dinner (B&B doubles from £147; bodegaellegado.com.uy). I’ve slept in a cabin under the stars at Sacromonte, an hour north of the beach resort Punta del Este (B&B doubles from £449; sacromonte.com), and religiously followed the Mapa del Vino — a map of every winery in the country, produced in 2022 by Uruguay’s vino queen (more on her later; instagram.com/mapadelvinouruguay).
Today the vineyard focus has moved from the outskirts of Montevideo to the coastal region of Maldonado, where the Plate meets the Atlantic, the dunes are skyscraper high and modernist-style bungalows lurk in pine forests behind the beaches. Thirty miles east of Atlantida is Piriapolis, whose history is pure Uruguay. It was founded in 1890 by Francisco Piria, an alchemist who believed that powerful ley lines crossed the cerros (quartz-filled mini mountains) that garland this sandy crescent where the silver Plata fuses with the mercury-grey ocean.
King Charles (then Prince) visited the Pisano winery
A century later it was a faded beach town but now those ley lines have been recharged by wine, with the recent openings of two significant vineyards. Last year I zigzagged up a vine-swaddled cerro to a wooden shack — Cerro del Toro, a fast-growing winery that opened a restaurant here in December 2021. Overlooking Piriapolis, I paired lemon-drizzled grilled chicken with ocean-salted albariño (mains from £13; cerrodeltoro.uy). The next day I ate atop the neighbouring cerro at Las Espinas (mains from £17; bodegabouza.com). It’s a 2023 offshoot of Bodega Bouza, perhaps the classiest of Uruguay’s wineries. At its HQ outside Montevideo, I once had a filet mignon so beautifully marbled that it knocked any wagyu into a cocked hat. At the glass-walled Las Espinas I had another — worth the airfare alone — adding cerro-grown tannat as the Atlantic flashed in the sun below.
The loveliest part of Maldonado, though, is Jose Ignacio, an hour east of Punta del Este. A fishing village turned upmarket resort town, it’s foodie heaven — from just-netted fish at the mom-and-pop restaurant Popei (mains from £13; instagram.com/popeirestaurant) to a dune-wedged grill at La Huella (mains from £17; paradorlahuella.com). Solera, a divine tapas bar, is owned by the sommelier Soledad Bassini, Uruguay’s reina del vino (queen of wine). She stocks 300 regional wines and created La Mapa del Vino as her lockdown project (mains from £13; instagram.com/soleravinosytapas).
The lighthouse in Jose Ignacio
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Jose Ignacio used to be all about the beach: when it came to hotels the closer to the dunes, the better. But all that changed in 2022 when Luz Culinary Wine Lodge opened four miles inland. I tutted when Bassini first urged me to visit — who wants to be in the fields when you could sleep in the dunes? And then I parked in a pine grove, walked into the Pompeiian red courtyard around which the eight rooms are drizzled and felt my shoulders drop.
A loveable thing about Uruguay is that here luxury is quiet, where in Argentina it is brash. Luz is one of the dreamiest places I’ve stayed in but it’s just that — dreamy, not dripping in gold. There’s no zeitgeist art in the rooms; instead, Mother Nature becomes Michelangelo, tiny windows framing the trees outside. The restaurant tables — all hulking slices of tree trunk — are set around a quiet pond, facing the water, not each other.
To reach the pool you step past the fire pit and into a pine grove — a liminal space that snuffs out the sun and muffles your steps through the pine needles underfoot. You emerge, beatific, into the garden. Will you slide into the baguette-slim infinity pool, slicing through the green? Sit in a booth at the bar, with a house-brewed shrub — a tangy, vinegar-based drink marinated with home-picked fruits? Or take to a sunlounger on the gently tumbled lawn overlooking fields, vines and olive groves? So many choices, so little to do. Welcome to the dulce vida Uruguaya.
Of course, one thing you can do is drink more wine. One sunny morning I dragged myself into the car and drove to Pueblo Eden, an aptly named hamlet in the undulating hills behind the coast. Revving up another granite-puckered cerro, I toured the winery — super-modern, very eco, with a top-notch farm-to-table restaurant — at Viña Eden before sitting on its terrace for a tasting (from £31; vinaeden.com).
Beneath me vine-braided hills unrolled like a rumpled bedspread towards a small lagoon and the glittering Atlantic beyond. A vulture skimmed across the vines, parakeets trilled from eucalyptus trees and the fluffiest of clouds tiptoed overhead. Marselan, chardonnay, pinot and, of course, tannat — the glasses kept coming, each better than the last. Eden by name, Eden by nature in this immigrants’ promised land.
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Julia Buckley was a guest of Luz Culinary Wine Lodge, which has B&B doubles from £328 (luz.com.uy) and Bracco Bosca, which has B&B doubles from £127 (braccobosca.com). Twelve nights’ B&B from £3,853pp, including three at Luz and two at El Legado, car-hire and guided visits to BraccoBosca and Viña Eden (journeylatinamerica.com). Fly to Montevideo
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