TN: South America

Notes on a blind tasting lunch of South American Wines accompanied by a salad of arugula, carrot terrine and Argentine prawns, and a Brazilian feijoada.

I kicked off with a starter wine which was in theme and designed to get people thinking about tasting.

Trumpeter Rose de Malbec Extra Brut – you might think that this would be heavy but it was quite light with a pale salmon colour and a nose of apple segueing to strawberry with time. Not a complex wine but a well made very tasty one. I may pick up another bottle for my annual summer Pink Madness event.

2019 Garage Wine Co, Isadore Vineyard Semillon (Maule Valley) – light yellow colour, interesting nose of grassy stone fruit with none of the lanolin often present in this varietal, smooth and soft medium length finish.

2019 Chacra Mainqué Chardonnay – this Patagonian wine showed a clean stony nose, was clean and dry entry with a chiaroscuro fruit salad nose with some oak that changed the longer we went back to it. Clean long finish. The name of Piero Incisa della Rochetta (grandson of the founder of Sassicaia) appears as proprietor and he hooked up with Jean-Marc Roulot just for this wine. A great success! I was of two minds as to whether this would work in a blind tasting of Chablis.

2001 Errazuriz Viñedo Chadwick – this was my entry and I hadn’t opened one for 10 years after the first bottle showed green elements that we all felt detracted from the wine. I crossed my fingers hoping that this bottle would have shed any of that while not passing into old age. Fairly dark wine with a pronounced nose fo dark cherry. In the mouth, a very slight astringency that seemed to abate with time (or with us getting used to it?) medium length and some mint showing up after awhile. Best bottle I’ve tasted and one of the most interesting on this day.

2002 Bodegas Salentein Cabernet Sauvignon – this Mendoza wine was a similarly dark and big wine with similar length. Notes of cherry and tobacco in the nose, slightly funky and a nice long finish.

2018 Bodega Chacra Pinot Noir Barda – lighter colour, nice Pinot nose with some spiciness, nutmeg in the nose, but sadly a bit low on fruit.

2017 Bodega Catena Zapata Malbec Catena Alta Historic Rows – very dark wine with a reductive nose with significant volatile acidity and seemingly a bit if residual sugar. Not a winner.

2013 Carmen Cabernet Sauvignon Gold Reserve – another very dark wine that you couldn’t see through, a nose of dark chocolate, soft tannins and smooth in the mouth with medium length. Good.

1991 Ferreira Port – I hadn’t opened one of these yet and decided to try one out. Medium colour, light sweet nose, on palate medium sweet and finishing with medium length. I found the fruit to be a tad stewed and wasn’t as good as the Vesuvio of the same vintage.

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Didn't take notes, but my favorites were the third to fifth wine poured. The chardonnay was really well made, I thought it was somewhere between Chablis and Cote de Beaune in style. The Chadwick cabernet was the wine of the day I thought, a lovely, earthy cabernet that was drinking very well now. The Bodegas Salentein was just a bit below the Chadwick, another very nice cabernet. The cabernet I brought, the Carmen, was very nice too but was a bigger wine than I was expecting.

[Jenise]

Bill, fun tasting--perhaps more than I thought, especially when our old cab held up especially after following your excellent Chadwick. Great feijoda!

2018 Trumpeter Malbec Brut Rosé Tupungato
Pretty pale coral color with crisp, dry cran-apple notes and a fine bead for texture. Drinks nicely above its price at $20.

2019 Garage Wine Co. Sémillon Isidore Vineyard Secano Interior
Coop's. Grassy, mildly waxy, assertive but not overpowering, and dryer than many. Somewhat like Tyrell's in style. Not generally a semillon fan but I liked this quite a bit.

2019 Bodega Chacra Chardonnay Mainque Patagonia
My wine. Clean crisp minerally nose with green apple, citrus and limestone, exceptional tone and clean flavors. Some thought similar to Chablis but there's no flint or matchstick here, and the fruit is a tad brighter--reminded me of the restrained style of Ceritas in California. Alcohol just 12%. I LOVE THIS WINE. Aging: 18% in concrete eggs, 25% in stainless steel tanks and 57% in French oak barrels (12% new) for 10 months. Should age well from here, but why wait?

Background: Piero Incisa della Rochetta is the grandson of the founder of Tenuta San Guido, the producer of Sassicaia, and Chacra is his personal project in northern Patagonia. The estate is in the Rio Negro valley about half way between the Atlantic and the Andes, and consists of alluvial beds left by the ancient glacier and by the river. There is quite a history for Pinot Noir in this region, and in 1964 there were still about 2400 hectares of planted vineyard, but then there was a sharp drop-off and by 1990 only 232 hectares remained. In 2003 Piero Incisa purchased the first of the Chacra vineyards, an abandoned plot planted in 1932, having tasted a Pinot from the area in New York and realising that the area had potential. Since then there has been something of a resurgence in enthusiasm for Pinot, and by 2009 the total Pinot Noir in the Rio Negro was back up to 1681 hectares.

Two more sites soon followed for Chacra, with old vines planted in 1955 and 1967. A fourth vineyard was then planted on the site of the original 1932 vineyard, using only vine cuttings taken from both the 1932 and 1955 plots (all the Chacra vines are franc de pied - planted on their own roots, not grafted). This last vineyard is the basis for the 'Barda' wine. The gravels and coarse alluvial pebbles, with a significant limestone content, together with a fresh, dry climate and great luminosity, allow for the minimum treatment in the vineyard and allowing for organic and biodynamic practices to be followed, which combined with a green harvest in January yields are kept very low. The region is extremely dry, being in the rain-shadow of the Andes, and apart from the area of the glacial bed which is irrigated with river water, the land around is desert. The farms in the valley bed were originally carved out in squares and flood-irrigated using a system of canals and ditches built by the British and the Italians to bring water from the river. The word used to describe them, ‘Chacra’, seems to be a generic word meaning ‘farm’ much as ‘finca’ and ‘estancia’ are used further north. Chacra still uses very limited flood irrigation (max. three times a year) which has the advantage of helping to protect the vines from nematodes and aphids (including phylloxera), but if over-used has the disadvantage of compacting the soils and reducing bio-diversity, so Piero and his team have developed drip-irrigation significantly, and also hugely reduced the amount of water used.

In 2016 Piero started a new partnership with Jean-Marc Roulot to produce Chardonnay. The groundwork was done to produce the first vintage in 2017. Piero says that he would never have dared ask J-MR to make wine with him, but a chance encounter showed him that Jean-Marc was enthusiastic about a new project away from the constraints of Burgundy. Chacra had a vineyard of Merlot which never really fitted into what Piero wanted to do, so they bud-grafted this to Chardonnay, giving them an instant vineyard of forty year-old vines – it turned out that this calcareous plot is perfect for Chardonnay. They have since planted much more Chardonnay, and there is considerable excitement about these new wines, which have a taut mineral salinity and complex, nuanced flavours that you'd expect from Jean-Marc Roulot wines.

All the above comes from Lea & Sandeman's website per another CT poster.

2001 Errazuriz Viñedo Chadwick Maipo Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
Bill's. Bordeaux-like, nice heft, bright, dark cherry, minty-earthy, classy; best red today. Nice to see one show better than the last bottle I owned/opened of this in 2013 which lacked structure. Btw, I paid $50 for my bottle in 2012. Current auction value at 7 times that is shocking!!!

2002 Bodegas Salentein Cabernet Sauvignon Valle de Uco
Our bottle. Good garnet color for age. Earthy and biggish with assertive tobacco and black cherry notes, showed surprisingly well, especially for an unknown-to-me auction pick for this tasting at just $26 a few weeks ago.

2016 Bodega Chacra Pinot Noir Barda Río Negro
Light, warm red color suggests more age than it actually has, scant plummy fruit, tons of spice. More like counoise than pinot noir, and lacked the fresh cool climate fruit of other Barda's I've had. I suspect this sat too long on a wine store shelf.

2017 Bodega Catena Zapata Malbec Catena Alta Historic Rows Mendoza
Bob A's bottle, had been decanted for four hours. Big VA nose, extracted and sweet, so much so that the first guess was tannat. I have zero tolerance for VA, so for me it was undrinkable.

2013 Carmen Cabernet Sauvignon Gold Reserve Maipo Valley
Opaque purple but very young with monstrous fruit and dark chocolate. Needs a lot more time to evolve and integrate.

1991 Ferreira Porto Vintage Port Blend
Medium color, light sweet nose, slightly stewed fruit.

[David M. Bueker]

Chacra is doing good things.