The UnCorker

Close Up: Viñedos De Los Vientos

We were very excited to wake up Sunday morning and see one of our favorite winemakers, Pablo Fallabrino, profiled in the New York Times travel section.  Having drunk our way through many a bottle from Pablo’s winery, Viñedos De Los Vientos, and having recently visited him on his home turf in Atlantida, Uruguay – we thought we’d provide some additional context to some of the wines mentioned in the article – not to mention Pablo himself.

Uruguayans are a relaxed, gentle people.  And if you can picture young Pablo (he’s in his mid-thirties), walking the vineyards in flip-flops, baggy shorts, and ponytail – you will see that he personifies the national character.   It’s a country of understatement, where nobody is in a hurry.   When we last saw Pablo, in late February, he was debating whether to harvest the last block of Tannat on the vines or head down to Punta Del Este to catch the big swell that was forecast in the surf report.  Contrast this to the image of the scientific winemaker with his refractometer, carefully measuring the brix levels and obsessively tasting grapes to decide the exact moment to call in the pickers – and there you have what’s special about this place.  Pablo is no slacker mind you – he’s a serious winemaker who was one of the first in the region to modernize.  His combination of intuition and experience creates some of the best valued, most interesting wines you will find from any region.

Continue reading Close Up: Viñedos De Los Vientos…

Bouza “Parcela Unica” Tannat A8 – 2007

Uruguay, especially with the tannat based wines for which it is most well known, is evolving as a world class originator of powerhouse reds.  And to our knowledge the source for the most reliably well-crafted of Uruguayan tannat is Bodega Bouza.   Bouza bills themselves as the only ’boutique’ winery in the country.  We’re not sure what that means exactly – but if it means controlled production, incredible attention to detail, and spare-no-expense winemaking then this claim may very well be true.    Quality is a fetish at Bouza – evident in everything they do – from their bespoke monogrammed French Oak barriques to the drip irrigation system installed in their restaurant’s vegetable garden.  The Bouza family made their fortune in the frozen food business, and this winery (purchased in 2001 and completely revamped since)  must be their attempt to purge their souls of all those TV dinners they’ve put into the world.

A lot of Uruguay wineries still use cement fermentation tanks, and Bouza – which also has modern stainless steel and oak fermentation tanks, is no exception.  But the way they have modified their cement tanks reveals a lot about this place – the tanks, which date back long before the family purchased this winery,  have been painstakenly sub-divided, so as to vinify by smaller ‘lot.’   This enables them to individually taste and track each lot of grapes throughout the winemaking process – blending some for their regular tannat, and bottling the best of the lots individually as “Parcela Unica.” The tanks’ beautiful epoxy linings and gleaming steel hardware make you quickly realize that this place may have history – but in Bouza’s case, it’s been retrofitted and tricked out with the latest and greatest technology.  None of this might surprise in California, but this is Uruguay – a laid-back and simple land dominated by agriculture whose only touch of pretension is the visiting hordes of city-slicker Argentinians who flood into the nearby Punta del Este beach resorts.

The A8 lot is from their Las Violetas vineyard, where each berry was hand-sorted and  selected after destemming.   Only 3200 bottles were made.  The wine is their most aged offering, with 18 months on first-use French oak.   Tannat is supposedly to Uruguay as malbec is to Argentina, but this is one of the only 100% tannat wines from Uruguay that can stand up to the very top Argentinian malbecs.  This wine is age-worthy, but enjoyable right now with an extracted boquet of intensely wild briary fruit, dark and full and spicy on the mid-palatte, and a lingering finish with unusually balanced and complete tannins for tannat (the grape’s name means “tannin” after all, in French.)   At around $45, this wine represents value when compared to it’s Argentinian (or certainly European) peers.  For around twice this price, you can buy from the winemakers favorite barrells, which are designated on the label on those particular releases, but we haven’t tried this.  It feels like a gimmick, but may be something a collector would be interested in.  An UnCorker Tip: 2009 is looking to be a fantastic vintage in Uruguay, with a long and dry growing season – in fact, Bouza used irrigation for the first time ever this year… so watch out for these releases a couple of years down the road.

Weird Wine of the Week- 2005 Vinedo de los Vientos ‘Angel’s Cuvée’ Ripasso de Tannat

OK- There’s nothing intriniscally weird about Tannat, the country of Uruguay, or ripasso wines- put those three together, and you have the unusual 2005 Vinedo de los Vientos ‘Angel’s Cuvee’ Ripasso de Tannat. Uruguay isn’t your average wine-lover’s go to country, but it is a country on the move(viticulturally speaking). The 4th largest wine producer in south America, the people of Uruguay consume on average 32 liters of wine per year- a significant amount- with almost half the population living in and around the capital of Montevideo, the demand is high, so until recently, they hardly exported a drop. Wine has been produced in Uruguay for 150 years, from vines brought over by immigrants from from Italy and Spain’s Basque country, but the focus has been on quantity at the expense of quality. At least until the last decade when quality wines from Argentina and Chile started flooding  markets in North and South America- Uruguay has been rushing to catch up- and it seems as though tannat will be their signature grape.

Continue reading Weird Wine of the Week- 2005 Vinedo de los Vientos ‘Angel’s Cuvée’ Ripasso de Tannat…