Toasting to Argentine wine

There's no doubt that Argentine wines offer terrific value and will continue to gain sales and share in India

Argentina has had a turbulent history: colonised by Spain in the 1500s, it gained independence in the early 1800s but thereafter deteriorated into civil war till 1861. There was peace and prosperity till 1930, after which a series of military coups and counter-coups caused instability, and the country returned to a comparatively peaceful existence only in the 1980s.

The lasting image of the country is, of course, that of Eva Peron (wife of President Juan Peron and first lady from 1946 to 1952) as immortalised by Madonna in the 1996 movie Evita — and of footballer Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God”