Tag:

malbec

Lujan de Cuyo wine writer Argentina Decanter Amanda Barnes

Decanter: Focus on Luján de Cuyo

by AmandaB March 18, 2021

Published in Decanter June 2020

Producers in this heartland of Argentinian Malbec credit the identity and diversity of their wines to the old vines they nurture. It’s a region where tradition is preserved and protected, even as tastes evolve and new styles emerge, discovers Amanda Barnes.

The headquarters of Malbec and Argentina’s wine industry, Luján de Cuyo may not be garnering the same buzz as emerging wine regions in the Uco valley and Patagonia, but it is very much the heart and mind of Argentina’s wine industry – and it has at its feet some of the oldest vines in the country.

When you pull into Luján de Cuyo, driving 20 minutes south from Mendoza city, an enormous metal sculpture of a Malbec leaf announces that you’ve arrived at the tierra de Malbec. While arguably all of Argentina’s wine regions can claim to be a ‘land of Malbec’, no region has quite as big a stake to this claim as Luján – which has more than 15,500ha under vine, more than half of it Malbec. Luján alone has more Malbec vines than all of France. Claiming almost a fifth of all of Argentina’s Malbec vineyards, it was here in Luján that the story of Argentina’s famed Malbec began.

When Michel Aimé Pouget first planted Malbec in 1853, in what is now a paved-over block in Mendoza city centre, it changed the landscape of Argentinian wine from a sea of Criolla (the ‘founding’ varieties originally brought in by Spanish colonists) to a land of exotic French and European grapes.

Read the full article on Decanter: Lujan de Cuyo profile.

Amanda Barnes wine writer Decanter Argentina Lujan de Cuyo

Women in Wine: Argentina

by AB August 8, 2015

Twenty years ago, it was hard-won to find a female working in the wine industry in Argentina, let alone a female winemaker. But today women are taking their place in the sector and this year’s Argentina Wine Awards boasted an all-female tasting panel, bringing to light the role that many of the fairer sex now play in the industry. This feature for The Drinks Business looks at some of the female trailblazers of the industry, and also some of the up-and-coming young female winemakers of Argentina.

1. Susana Balbo

Susana Balbo is unquestionably one of the most remarkable women in wine, not only in Argentina. Head winemaker and owner of Dominio del Plata, Balbo is at the top of her game, but reaching these heights as a woman was not easy. Hardships began early for young Balbo who had wanted to study Physics, but – due to the military dictatorship – had to pick a degree closer to home (which in Mendoza, is winemaking).

Even the early 80s, Balbo wasn’t the only female in the class – out of 33 classmates, 17 were women. She was however the only woman to graduate, making her the first female winemaker in South America. She puts the low completion rate down to having to take a late night bus (past the 10pm curfew), creating more vulnerability for women during the tyrannical military regime.

Life wasn’t easy as the first female in the profession. “I couldn’t get a job in Mendoza, I was rejected from many applications because I was a woman,” she confesses. It wasn’t until an opportunity arose in Salta, that she got her first job in a winery – partly because some of the hiring process was made by a headhunting firm in Paris, France.

Her move to Salta was indeed fateful…