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.

The first thing to think about when trying to understand a Uruguayan bodega is to determine which immigrant tradition the owners hail from.  Uruguay (like it’s neighbor to the south, Argentina) is a country made up largely of Italian and Spanish immigrants and their descendants.  The Tannat grape is king here, and virtually everyone grows it.  Viñedo De Los Vientos has a couple of great traditional style Tannat wines, and we’re personally partial to the more aged offering, the Eolo – potent and wild smelling, this is serious, cellar-worthy wine that retails in the US for a mere $22.    But modern producers like Pablo are looking to internationalize their offerings and stretch the definition of what Uruguayan wine means.  Those winemaking families on the Italian side (Vinedos De Los Vientos, De Lucca, and Bernardi) are prone to experimentation with Italian varietals and styles.  Those on the Spanish side (such as Juanico and Bodega Bouza)  innovate in the Spanish direction.  Thus, one winery is invariably planting Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, and Arneis while another is planting Tempranillo and Albarinho.  Add to this the typical experimentation with classic French varietals of any up and coming wine region and you have a complex, evolving picture.

Pablo learned viticulture the way a lot of Uruguayan winemakers have – by growing up steeped in it.  After immigrating from Italy, Pablo’s grandfather was the first to plant on the site where Vinedos De Los Vientos vineyards and winery now stand.  While one of the first things Pablo did upon taking over the winery was to replant much of the 37 acre site with better, lower yielding varieties – he still has some of the original Moscato D’ Bianchi vines on the land.  In fact, these grapes go into his flagship white, the “Estival,” along with Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer (10%/30%/60% respectively).   He’s also re-introducing Nebbiolo to the site – with several acres of new vines that will be producing mature fruit within a few years.

Young Nebbiolo vines - in 3 years, they will produce mature fruit.

Pablo’s most interesting homages to Italian winemaking however, are his Angels’ Cuvee Ripasso de Tannat (reviewed here as an UnCorker Wierd Wine of the Week) and his Alcyone Reserve Tannat Passito.   The ripasso is Pablo’s most serious wine – getting only the best clusters of Tannat grapes, some of which have been raisinated directly on the vine in the Sforzato di Valtellina style.  The Alcyone Reserve is much harder to find in North America than the regular Alcyone (somewhat widely available)- but it has a significant difference in that it has been fortified with grappa (versus brandy in the regular Alcyone.)  The result is one of our favorite red dessert wines ever – a wonderful flowery grappa nose followed by a deep, concentrated version of everything that’s great about Tannat – a wild, briary fruit quality,vanilla, toasty spice notes, tar, tobacco, earthy loam, and a vintage-port-like depth. Only a loco Uruguayan-Italian surfing winemaker could have concocted something like this – and the world is a better place for it.

The Viñedos De Los Vientos winery. Atlantida, Uruguay

This country has long vinified wines for it’s own consumption.  But exporting wines is a fairly new concept.  And few have done it as aggressively or skillfully as Pablo.   It is virtually impossible to find a bottle from Viñedos De Los Vientos in Uruguay itself, so committed is this winery to developing a market overseas.  Pablo frequently travels abroad and schleps around with sales reps to pour and discuss his wines.  Other Uruguayan producers envy his success, but don’t always understand what’s involved.  “Some  just want to send off the wine and then sit around and wait for the check,” Pablo told us.  “It doesn’t work that way.” Uruguay is ideal fodder for capturing the imaginations of Americans – a land of immigrants, surfers, cowboys, and wine-lovers. We can’t wait for more of these wines to start turning up in our marketplace – and in the meantime, we’re enjoying being in on a well-kept secret.

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.

Originally from the Southwest of France, famed in Madiran, Tannat plantings have decreased there, but have had success in South America, and with its ‘Angel’s Cuvee’ moniker, this is a wine clearly made for the export market. Tannat is a tannic black grape capable of making age-worthy wines of real character. The tradition of making wines in a ripasso style is traditionally Northern Italian; refermenting young wines on the unpressed skins from Amarone wines(of course, not in this case)- this process adds body and character to wine, though all to often it adds bitter tannin left in the skins from the free run wine made previously, or is used simply to try to cover up flawed or mediocore wines. In this case though we suspect, due to the quality and expense of this bottling, that like many quality minded producers in the Veneto, this wine isn’t a traditional ripasso; rather we suspect that the dried skins were replaced by half- dry whole grapes, adding depth and body, without adding tannin or astringincy-

The 2005 Vinedo de los Vientos ‘Angel’s Cuvee’ Ripasso de Tannat is unfined and unfiltered, and theres a lot of fruit here, cooked plums, raisins, also some rhubarb and some dark cassis liquer. Woodsy, with notes of truffles and black pepper, loads of forest floor and something minty and anise provides background. 18 months in barrel tames the tannins somewhat, and lends a bit of smooth vanilla. Suprisingly, only 13% abv- still think big rich dishes or aged cheese for this guy. Around $45-