25
Apr
2010
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Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
T’was an unexpected wine soaked Saturday. First, a friend came over for a tasting of 16 wines from Argentina, Spain and Bolivia – yes I did say Bolivia … there’s some impressive wine coming from this South American country, especially from a winery called La Concepcion. We sat down afterward for a bottle of Michel Torino’s 2006 Don David Malbec, which turned out to be marginally corked, no vibrancy to the fruit, odd mouth feel, off smelling – this wine, when I originally tasted it, was just so full of life, I can’t say the same for this bottle. Time to find something else.
Searching a drink now portion of my cellar I located a bottle of Lucky Country 2006 Shiraz ... (speak about Shiraz, see how I managed to bump into Shiraz Mottiar of Malivoire Wine Company and ended up tasting through some of his wines)
To read about more interesting adventures thru the world of wine check out the On the Road With the Grape Guy blog.
24
Apr
2010
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Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
The sub-title of this tasting was: From Salta to Patagonia, just two of the nine (or so) wine regions of Argentina you could have tried wines from at this tasting. There were 19 producers (most looking for agents/representation here in Ontario) that are making wine in, what is possibly the trendiest wine country at the moment. Argentine wine seems to be everywhere and after a quick glance at the provided catalogue you would see it is, for the most part, very well priced. I did a rough calculation and found that 78% of the wines poured at this event were under $20.
The catalogue was quite informative about what Argentina has done to improve its wines, the region and other pieces of trivia: things like in 2007 Argentina became the sixth largest wine producing country in the world and the fourth largest consumer per capita, or how about this one, in “1554 Juan Cedron, a Jesuit priest, plants first vines.”
About the regions …
I think that some new Argentinean regions are going to be entering your wine lexicon sooner rather than later, we’ve all heard of Mendoza by now, but what about Salta, La Rioja, San Juan (the 2nd largest wine region in Argentina), Neuquen (the fastest growing region, adding 1500 hectares over the last 5 years alone) and Rio Negro (the oldest wine producing region). But for now Mendoza still accounts for 70% of Argentina’s total production.
The Wines of Note ... (here's my list of a dozen or so wines that were impressive)
To read about more interesting adventures thru the world of wine check out the On the Road With the Grape Guy blog.
