There are wine regions you visit in a day, with the wineries fifteen minutes apart and the hotel in the middle. This is not one of them, and it is worth knowing that before booking.
01 Vineyards between fifteen hundred and three thousand metres
The figure that defines the region is altitude. The Calchaquí valleys' vineyards are spread between 1,530 and 3,111 metres. For comparison: most European wine regions work below 500.
Cafayate, the village that organises the southern end of the valley, sits at around 1,600 metres. From there the valley climbs north through Animaná, San Carlos, Angastaco, Molinos and Seclantás to Cachi, at 2,531.
The emblematic grape is Torrontés, a white variety that in this region gives wines with a very marked floral aroma. Red grapes are grown too, above all Malbec and Tannat, but Torrontés is the one people associate with Cafayate.
From fifteen hundred and thirty to three thousand one hundred and eleven metres: among the highest wine regions in the world, and not by a little.
02 What altitude does to a grape
Two things change when a vine climbs two thousand metres. The first is radiation: the atmosphere above is thinner and filters less ultraviolet, so the plant receives considerably more than it would below.
The second is the temperature range. With dry air and clear skies, the difference between midday and night is large, and in this region it can approach twenty degrees during the ripening season.
What is attributed to those two conditions is deeper colour and more marked aromas, because the plant responds to radiation by reinforcing the grape skin, and acidity that holds up better, because cold nights slow its breakdown.
It is worth drinking with that idea in mind, because it turns a tasting into a reading of the place: what you are tasting is, in good part, the altitude it grew at.
03 The road, which is half the plan
The classic access from the city of Salta to Cafayate is Route 68, which runs through the Quebrada de las Conchas: some fifty kilometres of canyon with coloured strata, named formations and an alignment hugging the riverbed.
From Cafayate northwards, the axis is Route 40 along the floor of the Calchaquí valley. And here begins what has to be decided before setting off: much of that stretch is not surfaced. It is gravel in reasonable condition, but it is gravel.
That means low speeds, dust, and reckoning stages in hours rather than kilometres. It also means an ordinary car is enough in the dry season, and that in the rainy season things change completely.
04 Three thousand three hundred and forty-eight metres of climb
The other access to the valley, and the most spectacular, is the Cuesta del Obispo: a zigzagging stretch of provincial route 33 climbing from Chicoana, at 1,270 metres, to the Piedra del Molino, at 3,348.
It is about twenty kilometres of wide, gravelled road, permanently maintained, winding up the slope. A few hundred metres from the top there is a viewpoint from which nearly the whole climb is visible at once.
Past the Piedra del Molino, the same route 33 crosses Los Cardones National Park, 64,117 hectares of high plain covered in columnar cacti, and drops to Cachi. It is the connection between the wet world of the Lerma valley and the dry one of the Calchaquí, and it takes a morning.
05 When, and why not in summer
The window is May to September and it does not allow much argument. In those five months the city of Salta collects 22.9 millimetres of rain in total, with average highs of 19.8 to 24.7 degrees.
Between December and March 590.1 millimetres fall, 80 per cent of the year, and that is exactly the problem: a gravel road crossing bridgeless beds stops being reliable when it rains one day in two.
Winter's counterpart is the nights. In July the average minimum in the city is 2.9 degrees, and in the valley, higher and drier, it drops below zero as a matter of course. The day, by contrast, is comfortable and the sky is open almost always.
06 How to put it together
The route that works is the full circuit and not an out-and-back. You go down from Salta to Cafayate through the Quebrada de las Conchas, up the Calchaquí valley to Cachi and back to Salta over the Cuesta del Obispo. Three different landscapes and no repeated stretch.
Three days is the minimum and four or five is sensible, because the gravel stages are slow and because stopping at a winery and driving on two hours later is not a good combination. It is better for tastings to fall at the end of the day.
And one warning about altitude that is rarely mentioned: above three thousand metres alcohol hits considerably harder, and the body takes a couple of days to adjust. If the plan involves sleeping high and tasting the same day, go easy on the first one.
Bernard Gagnon Draa-Tafilalet for someone who wants the hard erg, not the roadside one
László Szalai Split-Dalmatia for someone who wants to go from the beach to seventeen hundred metres
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