Alex Davies, our awesome buyer, has just returned from a wine-fuelled trip to some of South America’s finest wineries. It’s a tough gig (we know), but someone has to do it, and, as fun as it sounds, there was a ‘serious’ work element to it. After all, we’re sure that all our customers would love to enjoy the latest vintages coming out of Chile and Argentina, right?
Over to you, Alex!
De Martino
First up on the trip was a visit to a true customer favourite – De Martino. We’ve been working with these guys for many years now and they continually produce some of our most popular wines.
Running along the snow-capped Andes, where cool coastal breezes weave through the mountain valleys, Chile’s major wine producing region is actually considered pretty cold for grape growing. The guys at De Martino however don’t let these challenging conditions get in their way and continually turn out some of the best Carménère on the market. In fact, they were the first winemakers in Chile to bottle the now world-famous grape variety back in 1996. Only two of which are left in existence after the 2010 earthquake destroyed almost the entire vintage.
After meeting Sebastian De Martino, we began our tour of the vineyards and winery. Sebastian and the team here strive to keep their wines as natural as possible, and use traditional amphorae (known as ‘tinajas’) for fermentation and ageing. This enables them to produce fantastically pure and crisp wines.
We then had the pleasure of meeting Marcelo Retamal, head winemaker, who has big ideas for the future of Chilean wine production! Often visiting vineyards abroad for inspiration, Marcelo wants to push the boundaries of where De Martino plan future vineyards across South America. Not one for playing it safe, Marcelo is keen to experiment with flavours and characteristics of various grape varieties in more extreme locations – who knows where they’ll end up!
-
Wine tasting with the De Martino team -
Lunch by the fire
During our tasting, Marcelo talked us through their impressive range of wines, whilst we sampled a few of their top bottles over an alfresco lunch by the fire. A perfect way to end the visit before enjoying a spot of skiing in the Andes with the De Martino family. They certainly know how to treat their guests well!
Perez Cruz
Fresh from my skiing trip across the snow-capped volcanic slopes of the Andes, I arrived at the impressive Perez Cruz winery at the mountain valley foothills. These guys are responsible for producing our best selling wine of all time – the Perez Cruz Winemaker’s Selection – it’s incredible.
Perez Cruz is famous for its premium red wine production – namely Cabernet Sauvignon, Carménère, Malbec, Shiraz and Grenache – and boasts a winery with spectacular architecture. Everything about this winery has been designed with quality in mind.
We embarked on a tour of the vineyards, where we quickly got an idea of just how much thought and care goes into viticulture. The soils here are poor in nutrients, so vines have to work extra hard to sink their roots into the ground in search of the essential nutrients they need to grow. The harder the vines have to work, and the longer the fruit takes to ripen, the more intense the resulting grape flavours.
-
Deep, stony soil -
Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard
We round off my short but sweet visit with a cheeky tasting of some of our customer favourites, before a rather turbulent evening flight from Santiago to Mendoza.
Zuccardi
We arrived in Mendoza in style with an Argentinian steak dinner classically paired with red wine. It was glorious. With the crucial ‘local cuisine’ box ticked off our checklist, we headed over to a winery recently voted ‘Best Vineyard in the World’ – quite an accolade.
Bodega Zuccardi Valle de Uco is a family owned winery built from stones sourced from the local area. Looking like something out of a film, this is certainly one of the most modern and striking wineries in South America.
Zuccardi’s Jose Alberto (the boss) gave us the grand tour of the estate, and talked through the key ingredient to the quality of wines here – calcium carbonate found in the soil. This gives their wines a unique texture and elegance that other wineries are unable to achieve.
Zuccardi have recently undertaken an in-depth study of the soil types across their vineyards so they can harvest based on topsoil depth. This allows them to bring the grapes in at their optimum ripeness – not just an average across the whole vineyard – and it genuinely shows in their wines.
-
Calcium carbonate soil -
In-depth study of vineyard soil
Itching to sample the range, we ended the visit with the obligatory wine tasting. But this wasn’t just any old tasting room… check out that view!
Belhara
Next up was a trip to Belhara Estate in the Uco Valley of Argentina. Now this is a proper family-run winery with no flashy gizmos – just honest winemaking! On arrival I was greeted by Enzo, the vineyard manager, who talked us through the vine training systems and how they go about perfecting the soil. No English spoken here, which was very good practice!
We were then taken to the all-important tasting room to sample their wines – quite a difference in setup to Zuccardi, but no less enjoyable.
Santa Rita
My final stop on the tour took me back to Chile with a visit to Santa Rita, one of the country’s most important wineries. This was a whistle-stop tour and was largely focused on tasting their wines, which definitely wasn’t a bad thing! This was a fairly typical tasting experience for the buying team here at Virgin Wines – about 60 wines to taste in a short amount of time, followed by a very big (and tasty) lunch. It’s afternoons like this which is why you probably won’t hear us complaining too much…
You can expect to see the latest vintages from both Chile and Argentina in 2020. As always, we look forward to hearing what you think!
