The UnCorker

2004 Establecimiento Juanicó Familia Deicas Preludio

Juanicó is Uruguay’s largest and oldest winery, by some margin. Their Don Pascual and other labels dominate local supermarket shelves and restaurant wine lists. Their mid-century modern winery facility in Canelones looks like a place a Bond villain might be planning something grand and megalomaniacal – a massive, Eero Saarinen-esque, spider-like concrete structure with buzzing trucks and conveyor belts, industrial hose by the mile, and a winery staff of well over a hundred at harvest time. Size is not necessarily a bad thing. This wine-loving country is basically fueled on Juanico’s Don Pascual label Tannat – which is a steal for $10 (USD) retail- and when the plebes splurge, they go for the Don Pascual Tannat Roble, an oaked version of the same wine that comes in about $20. They also slurp up well-made, modestly priced bottles of Cabernet Savignon, Chardonnay, Merlot, Syrah, and every other wine grape you’ve ever heard of in both single varieties and blended combos. But sometimes you’ve got to make the crowd pleasers to free up the opportunity to make your labor of love – the ambitious, expensive, hand-crafted blend that makes a winemaking family proud.

Juanico’s diverse product line is a bit difficult to get one’s head around. Their website has dozens of releases at a wide variety of price-points.  Imagine Uruguay’s equivalent of Two-Buck Chuck and Screaming Eagle, all coming from the same place. The Preludio is probably the most well-known ‘premium’ wine, but at around $40-50 USD it’s not the most expensive here by any means. This is a meritage-style blend of six kinds of grapes – Tannat, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Savignon, Petit Verdot, and Marselan. The wine always smells expensive, and the 2004 is no exception – a huge, complex nose of mostly black fruits, like dark plum, prune, cassis, as well as toasty notes of tar, chocolate, tobacco, and vanilla. The wine has great extraction, but with enough tension to feel balanced. The fact that this was the first gold-medal winning wine at VinItaly to ever come from anywhere other than France or Italy is not a surprise. Basically, this wine could have come from France or Italy. Each year they blend this to the taste of the winemaking staff – but the goal is to have a dominant Tannat character. It’s difficult to tell if they accomplish that with this much going on. Uruguayan Tannat has a wild red-fruit quality underlying it – despite it’s inky black richness – which is not fully on display with all this oak and these Bourdeux grapes in the mix. But one way or another, this is a heck of a nice bottle of wine and for a top “International” style blend, it’s flat-out good value. Strangely, given their size and internationally-oriented winemaking style – Juanico wines are still very hard to find in the US. We hope that changes.