jamie goode's wine blog

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Spent an enjoyable day at the Wines of Argentina tasting today, held at the home of cricket, Lords. Malbec rocks. It's official: Argentina is making a lot of very good Malbec, and it is beginning to perform with its white wines, too. Perhaps the highlight of the day, though, was the seminar on the effects of altitude on wine, which was presented first thing in the morning by Catena winemaker Mariela Molinari (pictured), in the Media bubble (the view from which is also pictured).

She explained that because Mendoza is on the side of the Andes, it can offer all five of the Winkler winemaking zones (ranging from chilly to hot) within a short distance of each other. This is an amazing viticultural 'tool'. We tasted five different wines, ranging from the 'low' altitude site (low is a relative term here) at 850 metres up to nearly 1600 metres for the higher sites. Interestingly, Catena are taking a scientific approach, looking at the twin effects of high altitude (lower temperatures and increased sunlight intensity) on the wines.

The seminar had some good scientific content (probably too much for some of the participants; perhaps not quite enough for nutters like me) and Mariela dealt well with a modestly hostile crowd of 30 - quite a few tough questions were asked, some with agendas. I'll write this up in detail soon.

6 Comments:

At 5:23 AM, Blogger Salil said...

Wine seminars at Lord's? If so, really should have been about big, dominating Aussie ones, more in tune in what we see there every few years. :)

Will have to keep my eye out for Argentinian Malbec though. Haven't tasted any wine from that region of the world, had better start getting acquainted. Any recommendations for us uninitiated?

 
At 1:39 PM, Blogger Jamie said...

Lord's is a wine trade favourite now. Caught some county cricket on my last tasting there.

 
At 9:03 PM, Blogger billn said...

Hi Jamie can you comment on what a 'condensed' tannin is?
Cheers, Bill

 
At 12:45 PM, Blogger Jamie said...

Bill, it's another term for proanthocyanidins, as opposed to hydrolysable tannins.

 
At 8:31 AM, Blogger Paul Tudor said...

Do you have a contact address or email address so that someone could request a copy of this paper? I see that you have extracted from it, so presumably it is avilable?

Thanks

Paul Tudor
Auckland, NZ

 
At 8:45 AM, Blogger Jamie said...

Paul, I'll send you Mariela's email. I don't think the work has been published yet.

 

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