Yesterday I attended a wine distributor tasting at the Boulder Cork. Usually these tastings are good opportunities but not my favorite experiences. Picture a dark room full of wine shop buyers and restaurateurs, walking around a large room lined with small table displays of wine. Everyone has a pamphlet of information with numbers and letters describing the wine, a pen, and a wine glass. Usually there are loads of people and one has to squeeze their way, sometimes just an arm gripping an empty glass, between bodies to sample one's desired wine. They are in the middle of the day and some come to taste and some come to drink. To my joy, yesterday this was not the case. I walked in slightly early, to find a small room with a large table set with six glasses at each place setting, each filled with a sample of red wine. This tasting was for one producer, Nicolas Catena in Argentina. The vineyard manager, Celeste was there, who was a young, smart, female who spoke very decent English with much embarrassment. I liked her right off. As others arrived, we sat down at the family style table and Celeste began talking about the vineyards in Argentina and where each of our six wines were from. This is when I became really excited. These were no ordinary wines. These wines were made with much creativity and ingenuity. Like in Bordeaux, Nicolas Catena blends his wines to achieve more balance and complexity, the Bordeaux blend is known as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with Cabernet Franc or another minor blending partner... the only question in this situation is, these wines are 100% Malbec. What Catena does is blend clones. Clones are all slightly different. They have over 400 clones of Malbec planted in an "experimental" vineyard (and the wine from this vineyard was actually quite nice!). From this vineyard they determined about 20 clones with desirable specific differences. When harvest comes, they pick different clones and different vineyards at different times, depending on how each has ripened. At the winery, the magic becomes the art of blending the right clones to make the most complex relationships while maintaining balance and symmetry in the wine. Exciting eh! My favorite was a wine grown at 5,000 feet in the Adrianna Vineyard. Wow was it dense. At that altitude the grapes grow thicker skins to protect their seeds from the sun resulting in less skin to juice which produces a very structured wine. It smelled like a rainy tropical night of African violets and deep secrets being told in the shadows. Just Kidding....:-) but it did smell like violets and a smoothie of potting soil, herbs, and blackberries. On the palate the fruit was extremely concentrated (age worthy indeed) and the tannins were dense, direct and integrated. Yes very good. The quality of wines in So. America is getting better and better. Keep an eye out for the Catena wines, he also makes a fantastic Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.
Cheers
Jess
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