High-altitude wine

USA TODAY, March, 2008 by Jerry Shriver

SALTA PROVINCE, Argentina -- Caspar Eugster looks down upon every commercial vineyard in the world except his own.

This has nothing to do with wine snobbery -- the Swiss-born viticulturalist is an agreeable sort who loves to get his hands dirty and his whistle wet. It's just that he occupies a unique perch: that of caretaker for a collection of grapevines that are growing at 9,849 feet above sea level in what is touted as the highest vineyard on the planet, Altura Maxima, near Payogasta.

These young plantings of Pinot Noir, Malbec and other grape varieties are scrawny things, stressed to the max by their seemingly berserk microclimate and meager rations of water. And they're being asked to do much: bear fruit that will result in wine to please the landlord, multimillionaire Swiss entrepreneur Donald Hess -- and further establish this remote region in the Andes foothills on the ...