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Beautiful Vina Las Perdices Winery
Next up on my Mendoza wine tour was Vina Las Perdices. It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Las Perdices, I have been pretty much shouting it from the mountain tops for at least two years now, ever since the moment I discovered their Bonarda Reserve in a quirky Palermo Hollywood restaurant. Working in our Buenos Aires wine tasting room allowed me to try a whole range of their best Argentina wines and they have never failed to impress me….which is really quite rare. So no surprises here; I was thrilled to get in on a bit of behind the scene wine making action.
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Las Perdices Vineyards and hail net protection
Vina Las Perdices is based in the midst of world wide acclaimed Argentine wineries such as Vina Cobos (Paul Hobbs winery) and Bodega Septima in Agrelo, Lujan de Cuyo, Mendoza. The long windy (and dusty) road that led us to the impressive facade of the winery was flanked by what appeared to be miles and miles of neatly trellised bare vines covered in netting, a relatively new method to protect the vines from one of Mendoza’s greats natural hazards: firece hailstorms. Hail can literally devastate large section of vineyards, greatly reducing yield, quality and therefore production. Ice rocks the size of my head, strip the vines of leaves, stems and berries, while any broken ‘surviors’ automatically have an increased threat of rot and disease due to open wounds. The nets have proven to greatly reduce the impact of the hail but is not 100% effective. In fact there aren’t any method which are, including explosive rockets that are fired into thunderclouds, seeding the clouds with silver iodine to instigate rainfall rather than hail or towers charged with static electricity may be placed near susceptible vineyards to try and divert the storm. Plus there is a downside of to the two latter methods: price!
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Carlos Munoz pruning Tannat vines
Carlos Munoz, the chief winemaker/owner of Las Perdices met us at the entrance and there began our extensive Mendoza wine tour. Carlos, a exceptionally kind, gracious and clearly passionate man explained everything in beautiful detail. The vineyards of Las Perdices are maintained to impeccable standards using the latest technology like drip irrigation and inter row ground cover to add to the natural biodiversity, improving soil structure, while naturally increasing/encouraging soil life. Carlos walked us through the spur pruning methods, shoot positioning and trimming that they apply in Las Perdices, to obtain a balanced vine and therefore high quality fruit which is all neatly positioned an accessible and well aerated fruiting zone.
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Punching down the cap
Inside the winery itself, I was a kid in a sweet in a sweet shop. The large stainless steel tanks and rows of barrels made it appear like a setting that had been used in a scene in Blade Runner but in those stainless steel tanks lay precious fermenting berries and must….the first stages of wine!! Carlos walked us up a flight of stairs that so we could get a better look at what was going on inside the tanks. The lid was popped on a white wine production tank containing only the must and I was overwhelmed by the aromas of sweet floral fruit that filled the air, there was no doubt that this was a La Perdices Torrontes in the making. The red wines tanks were opened to reveal the cap of berries floating on the surface, and a intense yeast and red fruit aroma. We had arrived just in time, the cap need punching down, a gentle process which involves pushing the pomace cap down into the fermenting must using a large stainless steel paddle. Senor Rico gladly volunteered for the job at hand….and failed miserably. The cap was as solid as concrete and it was only after Carlos made some head way that we could see the cracks in the surface and a release of gas from the fermentation process escaped the tank.
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Tank tasting at Las Perdices Winery
Tank wine tasting was of course, the highlight of my Las Perdices experience. We started with a Tannat, typically a late ripening varietal so was only at the beginning of its fermentation process. The juice that trickled down from the tap was the palest rose water colour, with just a hit of fruit and very sweet as the sugars were still just that rather than nice warming alcohol. Next we tasted my old friend Bonarda, that was mid process but had already developed a velvety deep purple colour, with incredible red cherry and cranberry aromas and just a just a touch of sweetness. Finally, one of the earliest ripening grapes is the red wine of Argentina Malbec and there it was in its tank with a matter of hours to o before its completion. Yes, this was wine that I know and love, plum and spices with the comforting warmth of alcohol tickling the back of my throat but just a little bit more rough around the edges, a touch more like grape juice rather than a fine Argentine wine. With a few months (or years) in lightly toasted French oak barrels and bottle these wines will be sitting pretty on our shelves here at Anuva Wines and I for one will be very proud to serve them!
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Wine Barrels at Las Perdices
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