“Pachamama,” said our guide, Orlando Condori. He tilted his glass, pouring some blush-colored wine onto the parched sand.
“Si, la Pachamama!” said everyone else, doing the same.
They looked at me.
“Pachamama!” I said as I poured half my drink into the earth. I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it, but I did it.
It was a shame. I’d been enjoying the rosé. Then again, it wasn’t the worst idea — I was lightheaded. So lightheaded that I had to sit back down.
“That’s not the wine,” said Niki Barbery-Bleyleben, a conservation ambassador for Prometa, an environmental organization focused on sustainability and community resilience. “That’s the altitude.” We were at 3,500 meters, or about 11,000 feet.
We were at a table set out on a plateau overlooking the Cordillera de Sama Biological Reserve in the southern part of Bolivia. We were in the high desert, the bright sun high overhead, with a view of — everything. From our perch we could see down the expanse of the Cordillera de Sama Mountain range. Between us and what appeared to be the ends of the earth: sparse, empty, dust-colored land, a glittering lagoon with its flamboyance of flamingos and so much sky I had to crane my neck to find its edges.
The reserve is in the province of Tarija, an agricultural region tucked into the corner of Bolivia bordering Paraguay and Argentina. Tarija, which is also the name of the city inside the province, isn’t big — only about 14,000 square miles, making it a click larger than Maryland. But its topography is amazingly varied: forests, deserts, lakes, mountains, sun, rain, snow. It has pumas, alpacas and llamas, plus three kinds of flamingos. This is Bolivian wine country — a collection of a half dozen of the best little-known wineries in the world surrounded by vast, untouched wilderness. Throw in a five-star resort and a celebrity wedding, and Tarija could be Tuscany.
With a side of magic.
“We are very spiritual in Bolivia,” said Dr. Barbery, who has a Ph. D. in social policy. “We are rooted in various Indigenous traditions that date back centuries. Andean cosmovision says you walk toward your past — it’s what is known, and therefore, lies ahead of you; your future is behind you because it is something you cannot see.”
That cosmovision explains the wine pouring. “Pachamama” is a word offering gratitude in the Quechua and Aymara languages, which originated with the Indigenous people of the Andes.
“It is a way of thanking Mother Earth,” explained Dr. Barbery as we loaded our gear into the back of the pickup for the two-hour drive back to the town of Tarija, walking slowly to avoid head rushes.
Winemaking at altitude
My friend Lisa and I had come to explore Tarija’s wine country with Dr. Barbery and her friend Julie. It turns out, if you know what you’re doing, altitude is a key ingredient to winemaking. “High altitude wines are trendy now,” said Jurgen Kohlberg, the owner of the Bodega Tayna, a biodynamic vineyard just outside the city of Tarija. The star of Mr. Kohlberg’s vineyard is pinot noir — one of the highest altitude pinot noirs in the world.
We were at 2,100 meters, almost 7,000 feet — and that wasn’t the only challenge.
“There’s no soil,” he said, as we walked through his vineyard. In fact, the ground was made up of tiny rocks called “lajas.”
Mr. Kohlberg, a slight man with a white beard, has lofty ambitions. “My goal is to make the best pinot noir in the world,” he said, explaining that he only harvests “at night in complete silence. It’s very magical, no?”
We went back to our mini hacienda, Casa Tinto, on the other side of town, thinking of Mr. Kohlberg and his quiet magical harvest. Not surprisingly he only makes about 2,000 bottles per year.
The next morning, after breakfast of black Bolivian coffee called Takesi and avocado toast, we walked through town to pick up a few handmade woven things to bring home. Later, it was time to visit Campos de Solana, maybe the most boldfaced vineyard in the area. Manicured pathways, lavender bushes, front doors 20 feet tall — Campos de Solana could intimidate the bougiest of Tuscan wineries.
“We shouldn’t have viticulture here. New Zealand, South Africa, Patagonia are on the southern belt at about 33 degrees,” said Luis Pablo Granier, the general manager, referring to the latitudes at which those countries are found. “Spain, France, Italy are the northern belt. We are at 21 degrees in Tarija so wine makes no sense.” In other words, this latitude is usually too hot for winemaking. “But because of the altitude we can produce even though we shouldn’t be able to.”
Like most wineries in Bolivia, the vineyards at Campos de Solana also produce a liquor called Singani (in their case, under the label Casa Real). Because it is distilled from wine, Singani is often compared to cognac or pisco but to true believers, it is in a class by itself.
“I felt as though I stumbled upon this gem that nobody knew about,” said the filmmaker Steven Soderbergh when we spoke on Zoom. In 2007, Mr. Soderbergh partly filmed the movie “Che” in Bolivia. “When I was first given the Casa Real Singani, there was a three-stage experience. It’s very floral and I’m not used to a spirit having such a nose on it. Then you taste it and it’s very complex. And when you swallowed it, there was no burn. It just vanished. I was like, ‘I’ve got to call vodka and say I’ve met somebody.’”According to its Denominación de Origen or DO, Singani must be made from the Muscat of Alexandria grapes and can only be produced in certain regions in Bolivia above 1,600 meters.
“When the Spanish colonized Bolivia, they brought wine,” Franz Molina of the Bodega Kuhlmann winery later explained. “But it spoiled when they reached the coast so they had to distill the wine. That became Singani. It was a way of preserving wine.”
Mr. Soderbergh was so taken with the drink that in 2008, he partnered with Casa Real, and created Singani 63 (Mr. Soderbergh was born in 1963), the first Singani imported to the United States.
“I think there’s an incredibly inaccurate belief on the part of people who’ve never been to Bolivia, that it is somehow unsophisticated,” Mr. Soderbergh said. “There’s an incredibly vibrant food and drink culture. You get there, and you realize they have everything.”
Wine, gastronomy and Neil Armstrong
A few days into our trip, we set out to have everything.
Lunch at Atmósfera, the restaurant at Kohlberg Winery, was an outdoor affair. We sat at a table under the bough of a mulberry tree overlooking the acres of rich green vineyards. In the distance, birdsong.
Our group had grown to 10 — members of the Kohlberg family, friends, cousins, a wine executive or two. You could be forgiven for thinking every Bolivian knows someone who is friends with a cousin or neighbor. It’s a small place.
We started with homemade bread with wine butter.
“Out of respect for the planet we use everything,” said the chef, Pablo Cassab, who had walked over to introduce his food. “Nothing goes to waste. If we peel a carrot, we dry the peel and turn it into carrot powder.”
“The gastronomic route in Bolivia goes through La Paz,” he said, referring to the country’s capital. “But as people learn about wine, they are beginning to learn about food. That leads to Tarija.”
Then, the next course: grilled artichoke, fried broccoli florets with crispy onions resting on a purée of white beans. A moment later, a new wine: Stelar, a white made from Ugni grapes, the oldest vines at the vineyard. Stelar comes with its own party trick: the label changes color with the temperature.
As sunlight dimmed, the air grew heavy, the bacchanal came to an end. We got back in the truck as fat, deliberate rain drops pelted the windshield.
It was surprisingly chilly out as we headed into the town of Tarija for a stop at Tajzara, a tiny shop not much larger than a walk-in closet packed with hand-knit sweaters. A few alpaca shawls and llama wraps later, we walked to Diabla, a high end women’s boutique with Incan-inspired necklaces, cocktail dresses, woven bracelets, and a small atelier in back where each garment was made.
At yet another lunch we were told a story often repeated in Bolivia. It is said that the American astronaut Neil Armstrong saw the country’s Uyuni salt flat, at 4,000 square miles the world’s largest, from the moon and was so taken by its beauty that he vowed to someday visit. (He later did, with his family.)
Like Armstrong before me, I was surprised by Bolivia. So much of the culture seemed unlikely. It has grapes that shouldn’t grow; gastronomy to rival the best in South America but much less known; rocky, punishing terrain supporting robust agriculture. This pocket of land populated by llamas and flamingos and history is both closer to the heavens and deeply connected to its roots.
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