Gary's Wine Travelogue

Argentina in August

Maggie Fox, our Wine Club Director, spent two weeks in Argentina this August, catching up with some of the best producers of Malbec, Torrontes, Chardonnay and more.

Most people will tell you that the time to visit Argentina is in February or March, the height of their summer, when the vines are in full bloom and the vineyards are filled with activity.  But this August, I took the opportunity to visit several wineries in Mendoza and Cafayate during the quieter winter season (incidentally their coldest in 30 years) and to learn about what happens here in between the harvests.  As I soon found out, it’s far from downtime.

I started out in Mendoza, where I had the chance to spend some time at the Catena winery.  Nicolas Catena and his daughter Laura spend a lot of time jetting between Argentina and California (where Laura’s second home is located), but they’ve never for a moment lost sight of their vision for Argentine wine.  They’re enthusiastic to show their progress to American wine-lovers, who have become a large part of their export market.  They’ve invested a lot of time and energy in creating a state-of-the-art gravity-fed winery, and are constantly experimenting with new clones and methods in their vineyards.  They were gracious enough (or hard-up enough for help, I couldn’t decide which) to allow me to help with the winter pruning in one of their high-altitude Malbec vineyards, and afterward they showed me just how far Argentine winemaking has come by tasting me on their stellar Malbecs, Chardonnays and Cabernet blends.  The extent to which this winery over-delivers on their quality to price ratio was almost as impressive as their warm hospitality.

Next, I spent an afternoon at Trapiche, where variety is key. Catering to a bevy of tastes and price ranges, Trapiche currently produces (by my count) 37 different bottlings from their value-based Astica line through the medium-range Broquels on up to single-vineyard Malbecs and their top-of-the-line Iscay, a Merlot-Malbec blend.  The single-vineyard Malbec project is one to keep our eyes on; each year, they bottle three labels selected from the three best vineyards of the harvest.  The aim is to exhibit the extraordinary variation between different altitudes and terroirs producing the same stellar varietal.  I also have to commend their efforts with the Broquel Bonarda, bringing a grape that’s been largely ostracized back into the picture in a higher-quality light.

Finally, I ended my trip with a visit to the Michel Torino/Bodega El Esteco estate in Cafayate.  It’s quite a trek to get there: a two hour plane from Buenos Aires over to Salta, then a breath-taking 3-hour drive through a valley of red rock formations to reach Cafayate itself.  But the travel required was well worth the effort when I arrived at the beautiful Patios de Cafayate hotel adjoining the bodega.  The pace in this desert valley is slower, more laid back, more rural than elsewhere, and most of the town’s 11,000 or so inhabitants work, in some form, in winemaking.  While the Malbec here is very good, the varietals that impressed me most from this region were the Torrontes and the Tannat.  Torino vineyard manager Maximilliano Lester admitted a special fondness for these varieties as we toured the plots, hoping that oenophiles in the US and elsewhere will soon catch on to these distinctive varietals.  After a hearty lunch and tasting of these as well as their lovely Ciclos and Altimus blends, I, for one, was certainly convinced.  Torino, along with Trapiche and Catena, are pioneers of the Argentine wine movement, and I look forward to seeing even greater strides in future vintages.

To read more about Maggie's trip to Argentina, visit our new blog, GarysWineBlog.com!