(Wine-Searcher) - Things look bleak for Argentina's wine industry right now, but Tim Atkin believes there is an exciting future ahead.

Crises are almost a way of life in Argentina.

The present malaise, featuring 40 percent inflation, rampant corruption and one of the weakest currencies in Latin America is nothing new. I've been visiting the country for more than 30 years and this is the third time I've seen the economy on the ropes. Things have been even worse – inflation hit 5000 percent in 1989 and the government defaulted on a record debt of $100 billion in 2002 – but the place is still in a mess.

As you'd expect, the sizable wine industry isn't immune from the economic downturn. Only last week, thousands of growers and vineyard workers took to the streets of Mendoza, the country's wine capital, to protest at the indifference of the provincial government to their plight.

And yet I'm still optimistic about the future of Argentinian wine. Why? Three main reasons. Malbec is one of the "hottest" grapes in the world, especially in the United States, and is becoming increasingly diverse. The current crop of winemakers, many of them in their early 30s, is the best the country has ever seen. And, lastly, there's a new interest in terroir that is redefining the styles and quality of some of the top wines.

To understand what's happening now – and why it represents such as a radical break with the past – you need to know a little bit about the past. Argentina has been making wine since the mid-16th Century, but its modern industry is a recent creation. Argentinians are proud of the fact that theirs is the most established wine culture in the New World but, historically speaking, most of what the locals drank was of very basic quality. To a significant degree it still is.

Nicolás Catena, the patriarch who runs Rutini, Escorihuela, Caro (with Château Lafite) and Catena Zapata, is the man who is often credited with launching the country's wine revolution. He returned to Argentina in the mid-1980s after a spell as a visiting economics professor at the University of California, where he was inspired by the example of Robert Mondavi.

Catena was certainly a pioneer in lots of ways, but the arrival of several overseas consultants, one of them invited by Catena himself, was just as important for the development of Argentinian wine. Michel Rolland and Paul Hobbs came from France and the U.S. in 1988, followed by two Italians, Alberto Antonini (1995) and Roberto Cipresso (1998). The significant thing about this quartet is that they don't just consult in Argentina; they have also invested their own money to create, or help create, some of the best wineries in the country: Yacochuya, Viña Cobos, Altos Las Hormigas and Achaval Ferrer.