The 19 Best Activities in Argentina

A winery in Las Compuertas where you can arrive by helicopter, which sets the tone. The Durigutti brothers focus on Malbec but also produce natural, organic, and rare cuvées that reward the detour. Cycling the vineyard rows and ending up at a gourmet picnic is a gentler option. The on-site guesthouse, Finca Victoria, has wooden-beamed ceilings and open fires. Ranked 11th on The World's 50 Best Vineyards list.

The winery is built in the shape of a cross, which sounds like an architectural boast until you learn the four wings actually feed wine by gravity into underground cellars beneath the Uco Valley floor. Tastings happen down there, around a two-tonne limestone table pulled from a nearby quarry, with oak barrels and compass roses carved into the stone for company. Salentein holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, and the Andes looming outside make the whole thing feel slightly unreal.

The Altura Máxima vineyard sits at over 3,000 metres, which means the vines are closer to the clouds than most commercial flights get above sea level. This remote Salta winery, a spot on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, is fully biodynamic, with an organic farm and orchards feeding the onsite restaurant. Guests choose from four tasting options and can stay at the boutique mountain ranch if descending feels like too much effort.

The wines age in an underground cellar called the Cava del Ángel, where Gregorian chants pipe through the walls on the theory that music helps them along. Whether or not that works, it sets the mood. Bodega Kaiken is a Mendoza winery and tasting experience, ranked on the World's 50 Best Vineyards, with vineyard walks, cellar tours, and Malbec pours framed by an unignorable view of the Andes. Francis Mallmann's open-fire restaurant is on site.

Paul Hobbs, one of the original Opus One winemaking team, built this glass and concrete winery in Luján de Cuyo to put Argentine Malbec on the global map, and it landed at #49 on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list. Small-group tours wind through the vineyards and underground cellar before settling into a curated tasting with food pairings. A second, more immersive experience runs up in the high-altitude Uco Valley, where the landscape does a lot of the convincing.

Classical statues and ornamental fountains line the grounds of the Arizu family's historic Maipú estate, which Luigi Bosca has opened as a wine tourism destination. Guided tours move through some of the winery's oldest vines before landing at a tasting, and the neoclassical mansion makes the whole thing feel less like a winery visit and more like crashing a very elegant garden party where everyone is extremely focused on malbec.

Matías Michelini's biodynamic winery sits high in Gualtallary, close enough to the Andes snowline that you half-expect altitude sickness before the first pour. The visit starts in the soil, literally, with a farm walk through vegetable gardens and an herb-drying room, before moving into the cellar for tastings and a seven-course meal at the on-site restaurant. Named a World's 50 Best Vineyards discovery, it's a full-day commitment to the land-and-stars philosophy Michelini takes very seriously.

The building is modeled on a Mayan pyramid, which tells you something about the ambition before you've tasted a drop. Catena Zapata is a winery tour and tasting experience in Luján de Cuyo, and the family behind it did more than anyone to put Argentine Malbec on the world map. Tours take you into the barrel room, where you drink straight from the cask alongside charcuterie. Book ahead.

Cafayate sits at one of the highest winemaking elevations on earth, and Piattelli makes the most of the thin mountain air, turning Torrontés and Malbec into wines with a particular intensity you notice on the first sip. This Andean wine resort pairs vineyard visits and tastings with views of the surrounding valley that do most of the selling. A Discovery pick from The 50, it draws visitors who treat the drive through Salta's red-rock landscape as part of the experience.

The concrete eggs and oak barrels are the giveaway: this is a biodynamic winery tour where the family leads you through the farm and cellar themselves, no guide with a laminated card in sight. The concentric vineyards and octagonal Brutalist bodega sit in the Andean desert valleys, and the philosophy, organic and minimal-intervention all the way, shapes everything from the animals roaming the estate to the wine you sip straight from the vessel.

Zorzal sits high in Gualtallary, where the altitude and volcanic soils are the whole point, and the team is happy to let you feel that firsthand. Depending on the season, visitors can prune, harvest, or simply cycle the vineyards before settling in for empanadas and grilled meats on the winery grounds. It's the kind of place where the winemaker might pull up a chair, which is either charming or terrifying depending on how many questions you have.

The metal cupola crowning this stone-and-cement winery catches your eye long before you reach the door, and the building earns the attention. Zuccardi's tours of their Uco Valley estate have a way of making soil types genuinely absorbing, thanks to a research team that treats concrete fermentation vessels as a design problem worth obsessing over. The 50 Discovery recognized it, which tracks for a place that turns a winery visit into something closer to an architecture seminar.