Michel Aimé Pouget is a name you’ll often see come up relating to South American wine. Who was he and what did he do for the South American wine industry? Although widely credited with bringing Malbec to Argentina, Pouget actually did much more for the industry – on both sides of the Andes.
Who is Michel Aimé Pouget?
As you might guess by his first name, Michel was indeed a French man. A renowned ampelographer (an expert in grape varieties), Michel Aimé Pouget was invited to Chile (along with other French wine specialists René Lefebvre and Claudio Gay) to help develop the Chilean wine industry in the mid-1800s. He most notably worked in the Quinta Normal de Santiago. At this experimental centre and agronomy school, vines from Europe were researched and tested to see how they would adapt to Chilean wine regions.
It was in the botanical gardens of the Quinta in Santiago where the first French grape varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Carmenère (although it wasn’t identified as Carmenère then) and Malbec, were planted in the 1840s in Chile. This marked a new era of wine production for Chile.
Pouget and Malbec in Argentina
Michel Aimé Pouget’s greatest contribution to the South American wine industry, however, is often credited as happening in Argentina. A studious Argentine, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (who later went on to become the President of Argentina), was at the time in political exile in Chile. He became interested in what Michel Aimé Pouget was doing at the Quinta and encouraged his compatriots in Argentina to invite Pouget over to develop the wine industry there too.
Mendoza’s governor invited Pouget to found the Quinta Normal de Mendoza. The Quinta was a research centre and agronomy school (very similar to that of Chile) where noble French grape varieties would be introduced to Argentina. The most notable cultivar was, of course, Malbec which went on to become Argentina’s most famous grape variety and today’s most planted variety.
On the 17th of April 1853, the local government gave official approval for the new school and Pouget was appointed as Principal. This date has been taken as the day Malbec arrived in Argentina and is the day when World Malbec Day is celebrated.
While some claim that immigrants had brought Malbec vines over the Andes into Argentina before Michel Aimé Pouget arrived, the Quinta itself and Pouget’s work there certainly had a significant impact on the industry. Before the Quinta was founded, Argentina had less than 2,000 hectares of vines planted and within 20 years that figure had reached over 10,000 hectares, kickstarting the modern story of Argentine wine.
