Big Red

‘Dear mother, I’m feeling quite ill, From all of these bits off the grill; Nostrils and tits and unspeakable bits, Balls haven’t come yet, but they will!’

So wrote my late father-in-law, Cyril Ray, as he ran up the white flag after one asado too many during a trip to Argentina many years ago. And nothing has changed: I’m the least vegetarian person I know, but by the end of a ten-day trip to Buenos Aires and Mendoza, the merest whiff of woodsmoke had me reaching for the lettuce sandwich.

The traditional Argentine asado — a loose term that can mean ‘short rib’, ‘grill’ or ‘barbecue’ — is a long, drawn-out affair. On Sundays, when families traditionally eat together, it can last all afternoon. They start with pork and beef offal such as sweetbreads, chitterlings, black pudding, blood sausage and various unrecognisable bits of this and that marinated in chimichurri, before moving through several cuts of barbecued beef, finishing with the short rib, the tastiest cut of all.

And what do they wash it all down with? Well, the pre-asado ceviche is accompanied by well-chilled glasses of light, delicate, charmingly floral, appetite-inducing Torrontés, after which it’s on to buckets of soft, supple, violet-scented Malbec, grown in the high altitude vineyards of Mendoza.

Here, in an area the size of Britain, there are more hectares under vine than in New Zealand and Australia combined. Most of the 26 varieties grown are classic European ones such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Chardonnay, brought over by French and Italian immigrants, but by far the most successful is Malbec.

Once a staple in Bordeaux, the grape fell out of favour after the dread phylloxera struck in the 1880s, and in France it is now really only grown in Cahors, where it’s responsible for the region’s so-called ‘black wines’.