A few years ago, I visited Mendoza, the wine production
capital of Argentina, accompanied by a colleague from my University's
Viticulture and Enology Department who is a V.I.P. in wine tasting
circles. We were invited to taste the better wines from several of the
local wineries, two or three tours per day, which was where I first fell in
love with Malbec wine as a varietal.
There are a few quirky things I remember from this experience.
One day we visited a local winery
whose owner was an innovator experimenting with every grape varietal he could
find anywhere in the world. The
winemaker showed us small plots of different grape varieties he was growing to
experiment with. Afterwards, he hosted
an asado for us to taste his wines over a fine lunch of beef cooked over an
open fire. Some of the wines were among
the best we tasted in Argentina, especially when compared to similarly priced
wines (inexpensive). He was a newcomer
to the local wine industry who had made his fortune in business, unlike many of
the older winery families of Mendoza who were third and fourth generation
winemakers. Social status may count for
as much as flavor in wine evaluation there. I decided to challenge him and
asked if I could try a Zinfandel, my favorite California varietal. Out it came, and wonder of wonders, it was
very good, rivaling the old-vine Zinfandels from the foothills of the Sierras
at home. All in all, this whole visit
was a very nice experience.
That evening, we visited a new winery where we had dinner
and a chance to taste their better wines.
The ownership was French, and quite smug. Their wines were French style using Mendoza
grapes, and quite mediocre. My
colleague asked if they had an opinion about the wines being made by their
competitor who we had visited that afternoon.
“His wines are quite ordinary,” was the reply.
“Have you tasted them?” asked my friend.
“No,” was the reply.
The moral of the story is a frequently encountered
phenomenon in South America (and here in Los Estados Unidos too). Perception becomes reality. Status is more important than flavor. Don’t experiment but rather guide yourself
based upon the opinions of the experts!
My colleague truly was a V.I.P. as we wandered from winery
to winery in Mendoza. All of the local
wineries wanted him to taste their premium reserves and he was there to receive
a major award. My status was quite
ambiguous during these visits. People
kept asking me who I was, expecting to hear that I too was a V.I.P. After a couple of days of having no good
answer, inspiration struck. When asked
who I was, the reply became that “I carry my colleague’s golf clubs for
him.” The strange thing about this was
that seemed to be the perfect answer that satisfied everybody. They didn’t care whether I was important or
not. The only concern seemed to be where
to put me in the social hierarchy. My
now unambiguous status as a glorified butler got me through the rest of the
week with all the good food and wine I could ingest.
We visited a very large local shopping center to meet some
friends for dinner at a nice restaurant.
Arriving early, we discovered we were just in time for the grape harvest
festival, the Vendemia. Huge tents were
set up in the parking area with all of the local wineries offering attractive
young ladies pouring endless glasses of free wine for the tasting. But these were the vin ordinaries, not the
premium reserve wines, and we were both curious what the inexpensive wines
bought in the supermarkets tasted like.
We made the rounds in several of the tents, selecting wines to taste
either at random or from wineries we had already visited. The short answer is they tasted not so
good. Most of the wines were oxidized,
with a bitter flavor underlying the fruit flavors from the grapes. As we came to realize, much of the wine made
by the ton was fermented in old-fashioned cement tanks with poor or no control of
temperature and fermentation atmosphere.
People had always had this style of wine to drink and expected it to
taste this way.
It took change in the way the local wine makers thought of
wine to exploit the export market. What
did they have to learn? Simple. They needed to taste the wines that people
liked in the new markets they wanted to sell to, and to make wines for export that
would be acceptable to these consumers. Does
this sound familiar? Remember those
French wine makers who hadn’t tasted the “ordinary wine” they didn’t think was
worth drinking. There’s a lesson here,
folks.
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