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The view from Bodega Antucura in Valle de Uco
By the Friday of a week long Mendoza wine tour, Senor Rico, my beloved spouse was nearly at the end of his tether. As much as he was enjoying the best Argentina wines, he wanted nothing more than to relax in the Mendoza sun and fill his lung with the fresh Andes mountain air. So I let him….by taking a ‘quick’ scenic road trip to the stunning high plains of Valley de Uco, Mendoza to discover even more Argentina boutique wineries. Poor man! There was just no resting up when Cara was in Mendoza.
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I have always been interested in the wines of Bodega Antucura ever since discovering their Malbec while hosting a Buenos Aires wine tour so I was keen to get a look at their production. Unfortunately Antucura winery was closed to the public during our Mendoza visit but as it turned out Brigitte from Carinae is close friends with the owner Anne Caroline Biancheri and the head winemaker, as they are all French, so she wangled a private viewing for me. Yes, the French winemakers in Argentina all stick together, in fact I even found a fabulous book by Editorial Antucura called ‘Vinos Argentinos con Acento Frances‘ that features many of those wonderful Argentine-French wineries to prove it.
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The winery is based in an area that is considered the heart of Valley de Uco; Vista Flores, Tunuyan, hidden amongst some of the most breathtaking views of the foothills of the Andes I have ever had the pleasure to set my eyes on…’hidden’ is actually the operative word in this sentence. Arriving at Bodega Antucura was no easy chore so be sure to book a reliable driver when you reserve a Mendoza wine tour! I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it! Ha! Enough of that tomfoolery.
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We arrived at Antucura just in time to see the press process for a Malbec. The press is where the grape pomace (the broken down grape skins, pulp, seeds and any stems) is pressed at the end of the fermentation and post-fermentation maceration to release more wine. This press wine is usually high in tannin and dark in colour and therefore is sometimes only added in smaller portions to the original wine as it can be astringent and bitter. The head groundsman, Martin, kindly walked us through each stage while making it very clear that Antucura does NOT use any press wine for their wine production, only the high quality natural gravity wine is used for Antucura lines and the rest is sold off to mass producing wineries. All the same it was a fascinating process.
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The mounds of withered red Malbec grape skins, otherwise known as the cap pomace, were scraped out of the the stainless steel tanks into a bucket that funnelled them into a traditional vertical press, a cylindrical basket made with wooden or metal slats. A removable hydraulic lid was then placed on top which is used to apply pressure, pressing the contents against the stationary plate at the bottom. The liquid that seeped out between the slats was collected at the bottom of the ‘basket’, draining away to a vat.
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This traditional method gives fairly clear must or wine and is easy to use so is still popular with many wineries but the process is slow and labour-intensive as well as risking the pressed wine to oxidation as it is exposed to oxygen for longer periods of time, so some wineries (like Familia Blanco) might consider modern machinery such as the pneumatic press for this process.
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At the end of the process the impressive cylindrical mound of remaining dry grape skins are piled onto a tractor to be taken to the field to be used as organic material to fertilize the soil, improving soil activity, nutrients and aeration for the vines to reach maximum health for the following vintage.
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If watching grapes being pressed within an inch of their life doesn’t do it for you but you are yearning for a bit of tranquility, nature and luxury then Antucura can still cater for your Mendoza vacation needs with the beautiful Casa Antucura Hotel. Check it out here. Just dreamy….I’ll meet you by the pool!