Calle Bodega does not own grapes except for those that I stumble into when I walk out my door and which the dogs eat. The benefit being that one can source fruit from all over the area, depending on what your desired result may be, and that a spring frost or summer hail storm won't ruin your year before it has even begun. The downside being that you are relying on others to manage the vineyards and don't ever really have complete control over the finished product.
Guillermo or Guille as he is affectionately called here is the Agronomist, or vineyard guy. We set out a 9am to check on all the vineyards we are sourcing from here in Lujan de Cuyo and one in Maipu, which is another mini AVA more to the East. The specifics of what we saw and what I asked him about isn't really content for a blog. In broad terms, we talked about climates and altitudes, soil characteristics and water drainage, trellis systems and canopy management, leaf shapes and berry/cluster sizes, the sun and its impact on vineyard orientation, and other fascinating things to anybody that loves to dig deep into terroir. What impressed me about Guille more than his knowledge, was the willingness and enjoyment he took in explaining it all to me. I hit him with a barrage of questions like I would through water balloons in summer as a youngster. i was amazed with the ease that he handled it and after a few hours, I grew silent, too exhausted to ask more questions. I was ingesting too much info, I had mental overload and if it weren't for the dozen empanadas we picked up for lunch, I may have had to pound a couple mates (it's tea people!).
Aside from talking and driving, we also did a lot of walking, plucking berries and gnoshing on them the whole way. We wanted to get an idea not only of flavors and sugar levels, but also the maturity of the tannins which can be done by chewing on the seeds, the crunchier and nuttier in flavor being riper. We walked through Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. For each vineyard we armed ourselves with little zip lock bags and beging taking random berries. The key is to take a broad range, from all sides of the cluster and from both sides of the vines in more or less equal proportions. This is to ensure that you aren't just taking the ripest of least ripe berries and therefore left with half true data. Unfortunately, I didn't arm myself with obvious: long pants, long sleeves, and a hat. By the 6th or 7th vineyard, any living prickly plant in Mendoza had found its way onto my socks and boots. I don't know if it smelled my American blood, but I assure you that Guille was in a much better/cleaner state than myself. Lesson learned.
It was barbaro (Argentine for awesome) to see so many different vineyards in a day. For the first time I got a sense for the life of a vineyard. Some were ironed flat and lifeless, surely the sign of lots of chemicals and unhealthy soil. Others had been turned over recently and contained a happy little ecosystem of various insects and birds. Some had drip irrigation while others dug trenches and opened the flood gates to allow water to pass through the vines. It almost became common sense that healthier vines and better wine should come from lively vineyards as opposed to those that looked like Chernobyl. I can't say that I've been blown away by a lot of organic wines, but if I plant a vineyard, it will be as organic as possible.
By 5pm we were back at the winery and headed straight to the lab to analyze our loot. We smashed up the berries in the bags and ran through Brix (sugar content), pH and tA (total acidity). With Sergio (head winemaker), the three of us looked at each grapes' color, tasted the juice, and talked about picking dates. Kirk (the owner) may try to use this info as a bargaining chip, since these Argentines can be quite savvy and difficult when it comes to negotiations. He brought in one of the growers to show him that his grapes lacked intensity in color and that he should stop watering the vineyard. One trick for the growers is to water up until harvest to swell up the grapes and thus, their weight. Winemakers demand that watering stops before harvest so that nothing gets diluted--a classic tug o' war.
Needless to say, a day well spent. Long and tiring as well, but I took a lot more away from my day in the vineyards than prickly weeds and a sun burned nose.
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