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Archive for June, 2010



Argentina dominates- futbol y vino

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Argentina proved its mettle on the playing field in South Africa against the worthy Mexican team vying for a spot to compete in the quarter finals. Next up is an epic battle with the strong German team this Saturday. Mendoza is full of energy and action with world cup tee shirts and jerseys resplendent in the streets! (photo by worldcontributor.com)

Off the field Argentina is also dominating in the world of wine. In an article from Wines of Argentina, Argentine wines are still the fastest growing import in the US with dollar sales up 31.3% and volumes up 27.5%. Three Argentine wines also earned a spot of the coveted Wine & Spirits “50 Value Brands of the Year” further solidifying Argentina’s position in the international market as the go-to wine with high quality and value. The three listed were all under $20 and included Basso, Cruz Alta, and Trivento.

And while Malbec is certainly the darling of Argentina’s wine portfolio, the future is bright with the arrival of new and exciting varietals, research and development and new technologies. In a recent interview from Wine Sur with long-time winemaker Aldo Luis Biondolillo from Bodega Tempus Alba, his take is “differentiation is key.” He feels that winemaking has been “one of the few agroindustrial activities that keeps growing steadily in the export market, both in terms of production and commercialization.”  Particularly interesting are the associations that are in place to help foster winery development as well as research for clonal identification and propagation.

” Our winery relies on strategic alliances with Mendoza’s fund for transformation and growth (FTyC, Fondo para la Transformación y el Crecimiento), ProMendoza and the Argentinian fund for technology transfer (FONTAR, Fondo Tecnológico Argentino). The funds granted by the FTyC helped us protect our vineyards by means of anti-hail nets, and last year, it also allowed us to expand the capacity of our vats at the winery. ProMendoza guided us along our process of commercial development. And FONTAR helped us by means of their non-refundable funds program, which we’re using to finance the evaluation of ten years of work devoted to the identification, selection and multiplication of Malbec clones. We’re already producing our own clones. Our future vineyards will be developed using material selected from the centennial genetic pool of Argentina’s commercial viticulture. Today we can offer our importers wines produced from grapes selected by ourselves. Though this is a costly and time-consuming task, it will help us pave the way towards differentiation.”

Argentina, despite all of its recent popularity, is still a wine region that has yet to really hit its stride. Since I have been here over the last 4 years, the number of Cabernet Sauvignon’s that I have tasted and actually liked have increased dramatically. Granted I have a bit of a California palate, but I believe with the influence of foreign winemakers and techniques, understanding, farming, and producing Cabernet has increased in quality and consistency over the last 5 years. The future holds the same true for new varietals. I am excited to see how transplanted varietals, such as Rhone selections like Marsanne, Rousanne, and particularly Syrah have in store!

The future is shining brightly for Argentina both on and off the field!

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25% OFF all of our wines! 2 DAYS LEFT

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

ONLY 2 DAYS LEFT!

Stock yourself up for Independence weekend!

25% off all of our wines in our online store.

CHEERS!

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Be a good Catholic- Drink more wine!

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

Apparently, according to a recent article, the Vatican drinks more wine per capita per person than any other country, (granted it is one of the smallest countries at around 44 hectares, 1/10 of our Private Vineyard Estates, and just over 800 people , but still…) The Wine Institute of the United States did a little research and it seems that small enclosed either islands or countires are the largest per capita consumers, aka wine boozers. The Vatican tops the list at 66.67 liters per capita, wow!Argentina doesn’t even stand a chance at 27 liters.

Alder Yarrow, from Vinography.com also did a post on interesting wine consumptions statistics. Here are a few tidbits but click here for the full article.   The US doesn’t even make it on the first page- so come on- team spirit, be a good catholic and drink some more wine! I promise you might like your life better!

There are more than twenty countries in the world who register effectively zero wine consumption per-capita per year,       including North Korea (personally I could never fathom living without wine)

More mainstream tropical paradises saw huge gains in wine consumption per capita over the four years, with the Antilles, St. Kitts, Turks and Caicos, and St. Vincent all posting 100% or greater gains. (tourist season in full swing?)

The country with the greatest jump in wine consumption per capita between 2004 and 2008 was Nigeria, with a jump of 1236.2% to .33 liters consumed on average.- strange…

So, perfect reading for a Saturday night go pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy! Get ready for tomorrow’s big game Argentina vs. Mexico. GOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLL.

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Solsticio Wins Double Silver Medals

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

in 2007 when the Uco Valley was just a wild west wilderness of land beneath the towering Andes, Matt and Amy Kot along with their parents Phil and Nancy Hove fell in love and saw the potential of what was to come. They jumped right into the wine business even with full time jobs in Los Angeles, promoting not only the Uco Valley and Malbec but the, as yet, mostly unknown grape Torrontes.

Their hard work has paid off – their wine label Solsticio recently won very prestigious silver medals for their Malbec and Torrontes at the Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competiton. Just in time for the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and the winter solstice in the Southern!

The entire family came down in March to harvest grapes from their Private Vineyard Estate, three generations experiencing their first grape harvest. We look forward to seeing the evolution of their wines in barrel and which should be in the market soon! For more information about their wines or where you can find them, check out their website www.solsticio.com.

Congratulations to some of our founding Private Vineyard Estate owners whose vision has made their winemaking dream come true!

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Vamos Argentina- World Cup Mania

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Obviously the worlds eyes are pointed towards South Africa at periodic times during the day, as they will be over the next month in light of the epic battle of “futbol” mania, i.e. World Cup! Here in Argentina you can feel the enthusiasm, the pride and the obssesion that marks this sport as the national pastime. Everywhere there are Argentine flags and jerseys proudly displayed, with murmurs of Messi and Maradona uttered periodically in conversations.

This morning I was walking down the street, a bit late, heading to watch the game of Argentina vs. South Korea and it was a veritable ghost town. At 9 am the streets are usually a nightmare of commuters and pedestrians hurrying to the office, but today, it was as if there was a holiday. No one was on the street and as I passed several cafes, they were packed with all eyes glued to the television screens, in hopes for victory while watching Messi dominate the ball on the playing field. Every “kiosco,” a corner convenience store, from large to small also seemingly has a television as well. Everywhere all eyes were plastered with resounding cheers of GOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLLL every time an Argentine player hit the mark.

So with Maradona at the helm, which is a sight unto itself, Argentina’s prospects are shining brightly! Two games down with victory sweetly resounding. Next up Greece on June 22! Vamos Argentina!!!

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Behind The Vines | June 2010 | 84 Wines & Announcing The Inn at The Vines

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

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The Vines of Mendoza | Behind The Vines

OUR INAUGURAL 84 WINES

While the temperature falls here in Mendoza, the vines are changing colors and losing their leaves as they head towards dormancy.  And the 84 unique wines we are making with our Private Vineyard Estate owners this year are now safely in barrel.
The weather conditions for the 2010 harvest were outstanding, giving us excellent sugar and phenolic ripeness in our grapes.  Actually across Mendoza we were blessed with an outstanding harvest (http://www.winesur.com/top-news/outstanding-quality-in-the-2010-vintage). We picked 10 varietals, starting with the Sauvignon Blanc on February 22 and finished with the Tempranillo on April 24 (it is kind of ironic that we picked Tempranillo last, as it’s name means early).
Each Private Vineyard Estate owner completed a series of tastings over the last year to determine the desired style and character of wine, which range from fresh and fruit-forward to classic and elegant and finally, powerful and intense.  These parameters served as our guidelines for harvest dates and winemaking decisions.

Owners wine samples

After early morning harvests, we took the grapes in small plastic bins to the winery and performed both a cluster and berry sort – to remove leaves, twigs, bugs, unripe and damaged fruit, and bits of stems that could add undesirable flavors.

After sorting, we filled one-ton stainless-steel tanks (all fruit goes from each owner’s vineyard to their tank to their barrels) and did a saigné (bleeding) to remove some of the juice to concentrate the must during the maceration.

Individual tanks

Once in the tank, we did a cold soak (pre-fermentative maceration) for 5-8 days to enhance primary aromas and color through increased extraction. We inoculated with selected yeasts and managed the wine cap in order to obtain the expression of extraction, fruit tannins and concentration for each owner’s desired style of wine. In many cases, we also performed an extended post-fermentative maceration to increase the structure and concentration in the wine, primarily for powerful and intense styles.  The entire primary fermentation process took between 25 and 30 days process.

As soon as the alcoholic fermentation was complete and the wine was dry (without sugar), we pressed the wine using a small hydraulic press, enabling a gentle extraction from skin and seeds and placed the wines in new oak barrels (primarily French oak from Boutes and Seguin Moreau).  Most of the wines are currently going through malolactic fermentation, which will finish in the next 20-25 days.  The premium (U$20 retail) wines will be ready for bottling in December 2010 and the super premium (U$50+ retail) wines will be bottled in May, 2011 after 12 months in barrel.

Barrels

Tasting notes – Los Guapos Super Premium Malbec

While we have 84 different wines, we thought it might be interesting to share the tasting notes for one of our Super Premium Malbecs.  This Private Vineyard Estate owner has a chain of restaurants where this Los Guapos Malbec will be featured next year.

Tasting wine at this stage is challenging, yet interesting and exciting.  We can identify the basic expression of the wine and get a sense of its’ potential.  At this stage of development, tannin and acidity are very prominent, serving as the backbone of the wine, though they are not yet fully-integrated into the wine.  The acidity is a good indication that this wine has significant aging potential.

The color is a very intense, deep ruby red with blackish hues. It is showing an expressive nose full of ripe red and black fruit and plum — the typical aroma for Malbec.  In the mouth it is full-bodied, with solid tannins that will need time in barrel to mellow.  This wine has a nice balanced fruit flavor with slight spices in the end.

We will be tasting all of our wines monthly as they evolve to monitor their development.  Finally, in March or April we will bottle the wines, add a label for each owner and ship them off to their homes.


2010 PRIVATE VINEYARD ESTATE PLANTING FOR 25 NEW OWNERS

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Starting in September, we will plant vines for our 25 new Private Vineyard Estate Owners.  These vines will cover 120 acres, bringing the total acreage planted to 450 acres – and nearly 1 million plants! The land has been cleared and leveled and the plants ordered from nurseries in Italy and Argentina.  We are building the trellis and irrigation system over the next couple months and then will welcome our new owners to join us for planting in September and October. Malbec continues to lead the varietals selected though several of our new owners have chosen to plant Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir and Petit Verdot after tasting several excellent recently released wines featuring these varietals.

Inquiries:  Michael Evans michael@vinesofmendoza.com


THE INN AT THE VINES OF MENDOZA



We are thrilled to announce the development of The Inn at the Vines of Mendoza.  This resort will be located on 17 acres amidst the Private Vineyard Estates and we plan to open this wine destination in 2011.  We are excited to once again be working with Bormida-Yanzon (www.bormidayanzon.com.ar) on the architecture.

In the coming months we will share our revised drawings and photos of the construction (and begin taking reservations for the 2011-2012 season!).
That’s the latest news from Mendoza.  We hope that you will come visit soon and share some great Malbec and an asado. . .

Michael Evans
Co-Founder		 Pablo Gimenez Riili
Co-Founder

567 Espejo  |  Mendoza  |  Argentina  | phone  US 707-320 2699  ARG 54-261 -438-1031
www.vinesofmendoza.com | Forward this message to a frien

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Weekly Events | Eventos Semanales | Del 5 al 11 de Junio

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

The Vines of Mendoza | Eventos Semanales

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Decantados 50% Off en copas

Todos los miércoles y sábados | 7 a 9pm

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Degustación de Vinos y Tapas

Jueves 11 de Junio | 9 a 11pm | $45

Maridaje con vinos de Bodega RUTINI .Incluye dos copas de vino acompañadas de variedad de tapas.
Descuentos especiales en los productos de esta bodega.

Reservas: events@vinesofmendoza.com Tel. +54 (0261) 438 1031

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Wine Spectator | The Master of Malbec

Monday, June 7th, 2010

by Matt Kramer

Issue: June 30, 2010

LUJÁN DE CUYO, Argentina-For a guy with an MBA from Stanford, Santiago Achával can sound like a mystic. “All the great Malbec vineyards I’ve walked in have a serenity.” He smiles when he says this, but he’s serious.

Achával, 49, came to the Mendoza region in search not just of Malbec (finding that is no more difficult than locating sand on a beach) but of great Malbec. Make no mistake: The Mendoza region, with its 356,000 acres of vines, harbors great Malbec. But when Achával started his search in the late 1990s, such diamonds were decidedly rough.
“When we acquired our first vineyard, Finca Altamira, in March 1999, two-thirds of the vines were nonyielding,” he recalls. “It was a very old vineyard and we bought [it] for the price of the raw land. The seller was happy that we didn’t ask for a discount for having to rip out the old vines!”

Achával had no intention of removing the old vines, of course. Quite the opposite-he wanted to nurture them. “Even as late as 1999, people didn’t want old vines,” he says. “For years the government encouraged growers to rip out old vineyards and plant new ones because they are more productive.”

What makes Achával’s story more interesting yet is that he is not a winemaker. That’s Roberto Cipresso begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting, a highly regarded Tuscan enologist who’s a minority partner in Achával-Ferrer.

“I was just a wine enthusiast,” Achával admits. “And not only that, I’m from Córdoba, not Mendoza.” Córdoba is 380 miles east of Mendoza, about a seven-hour drive.

He continues to live in Córdoba and “commutes” to the winery. A sizable proportion of his time is spent traveling, especially in the U.S. (by far his single-biggest market) promoting his wines.

This promotion is essential if only because the three Achával-Ferrer single-vineyard bottlings-Finca Altamira, Finca Mirador and Finca Bella Vista-sell for some of the highest prices of any Malbec made in Argentina, upwards of $100 a bottle.

Asking such a price, when genuinely good Malbecs sell for as little as $10 a bottle, borders on the quixotic, if not in some eyes the downright traitorous. (You might recall a similar saga with Italy’s Angelo Gaja when, in the 1980s, he demanded prices well in excess of what others thought “proper” for an Italian wine, no matter how good.)

Achával knows that he has to deliver. And he knows that this, in turn, requires two things: very old vines and very low yields. “When we bought our vineyards, the old vines were trained to produce 3 to 4 tons an acre. You can get good, decent fruit at that level. But no minerality. So each year we kept reducing the yield. Finally we arrived at the quality we wanted: It requires a yield of 1 ton an acre.

“We also discovered something else: You can’t make those ancient vines go from what they were used to producing to 1 ton an acre. It’s like you’ve got a former weightlifter and you’re training him to a new sport. It takes three to four years to get them there.”

He points out another benefit from such low yields from old vines. “We harvest two to three weeks before everyone else. This is because the low yields give riper tannins sooner. It also means that our alcohol levels are moderate. This year, for example, our average alcohol level, fermented completely dry, is 13.3 percent.”

The results are stunning, especially the showcase single-vineyard wines. These are Malbecs a Burgundian could love, as each is distinctively, even dramatically, different. Finca Altamira (14 acres), from the La Consulta district of the Uco Valley 50 miles south of Mendoza, displays rich, intense wild cherry-with-a tang fruit.

Its opposite is the more delicate Finca Bella Vista (10 acres), which is flowery, with pronounced mineral notes-a Chambolle-Musigny among Malbecs. Finca Mirador (14 acres), also in Luján de Cuyo, is rich and chocolaty, with hints of minerality, tobacco, dried cherry and spices. It seems to mature the soonest of the three.

The best deal, by the way, is Achával-Ferrer’s “Mendoza” Malbec, which is blended from four other vineyards, three of them boasting vines 80 to 100 years old. Offering the signature rich, lush style of the pricier single-vineyard wines, it also delivers a surprising measure of their characters at a much lower price ($22).

Matt Kramer has contributed to Wine Spectator regularly since 1985.

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It’s Friday Night! What To Do this weekend? Woohoo!

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Life is what you make it of… here are a few tips that might help you program exciting and fun moments! And remember: just let your imagination fly!!!


Pillow Fight! that’s and interesting option too….

1- Call some friends and have them over for a game night. What kind of games? That’s up to you! It can go from Tic-Tac-Toe to Balderdash, Taboo, Charades, Cards, and even Play Station!  Extra fun tip: get a couple of bottles of our amazing Malbec at 25% off in our online store right now!

2- Going to the  movies. Ladies….what about doing it “Sex and the City” style- bright dresses and a lots of sparkling bubbles! Wow! be sure you try our Carmelo Patti Extra Brut, this is one Italian guy that will take your anywhere you wanna go!

3- It’s Summer time, its always nice to just chill in, relax in your deck, night, stars, and an awesome barbecue which would pair delightfully with some Punto Final Clásico Malbec 2009. Sweet and delectable from the start, with its red cherries and light spiciness… yum!

4- If you’re into music, what about taking your special one to a karaoke bar and sing the night away! (please do not forget your camera) priceless… bribing material = Bressia Lagrima Canela 2006 white blend, impossible to resist!

5- People… don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it- a bubble bath is a wonderful way to spend a weekend night. Put some soft music on, pour a glass of wine (Laborum Tannat 2005, Chalky tannins, intense and dark) and submerge into the silky bubbles. Very relaxing!

6- On the other hand, if you are the kind that can’t stay put… LET’S GO DANCING!  You don’t have to crash the trendiest disco, you can just invite a few of your funnest friends over, move the loveseat out and crank up your favorite i-tunes playlist!  If the neighbors complain, invite them over!! They’ll never be able to reject an invitation for some wine. Offer them a lovely rose, Foster Pink Rosé 2009: ebullient and festive with orange blossoms. Delicious!

7- Live anywhere close to the beach?! Have you tried camping, or swimming at night?  Fun stuff! But… this time I will recommend no drinking! :) or drink some but stay away from those crazy waves!

8- Do you really like adventure? What a about a quick trip to London?! Make sure you bring a couple of bottles of  Enrique Foster Limited Edition Malbec 2005, impossible to find in London believe me!

9- Instead of finishing the 99 bottles of beer song, what a bout 99 bottles of wine??!

10- OK…. I’ll leave this one for you! What is you favorite plan for a weekend night?! Surprise me!

CHEERS! and have an amazing weekend! Life is short, enjoy it! and something very wise that I read lately….”No point stressing out. One day you’ll be dead and none of this sh!#$!# will matter!… Thanks D!”

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CELEBRATE SUMMER SALE 25% OFF

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Fire up the grill, get the pool toys out… it’s summer time! And what better pairing is
there than BBQ and Argentine wines!  Pick your favorite cut of beef, throw it on the grill
and pair it will a delicious Malbec, spicy Cabernet or succulent Merlot.

To celebrate we are offering 25% off ALL of our wines in our online store.

Kick up your heels or relax poolside with a glass of Argentine wine!

Offer valid through June 30th *Only valid in The United States **To ship gifts to multiple addresses please be
sure to contact us so that we can place your order for you manually. Not all wines are available
for shipping to all states.

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