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Finca El Portillo
Varietal: Merlot
Merlot is one of those grape varietals which produces wines loved by almost everybody. Single variety Merlot wines tend to be balanced, medium bodied and full of rich and juicy fruit flavors wherever they are produced, which is almost in every wine producing country across the globe. Their wide appeal is partly due to the fact that Merlot, unlike other dark blue grape varietals, have a thinner skin carrying a lower tannin content. This allows wineries to produce wines which are packed full of fruit-forward flavors, and yet have a softer, fleshier and more rounded character making them highly drinkable and easy to pair with a wide variety of foods. As one of the 'Bordeaux varieties', Merlot is used in the production of some of the world's finest and most expensive wines, but is reliable enough and of a high enough quality as a grape to produce a wide range of wines affordable for all.
Region: Cuyo
The region of Cuyo has been internationally associated with fine Argentinian wine for several decades, and has a wine history which stretches back centuries to the time of the original Spanish settlers, who sought areas in which to plant imported grape vines for sacramental wine production. The region contains several of Argentina's most renowned and widely appreciated provinces, including the Mendoza, La Rioja, San Juan and San Luis, and the mountainous nature of this arid region provides an ideal environment for vineyard cultivation. As the mighty Desaguadero River snakes its way between the Andes, it deposits plenty of important minerals in the soil, which allow grape varietals closely associated with the Argentinian wine industry – such as Malbec – to grow to a perfect level of ripeness. As such, even in the driest areas of the Cuyo region, flavorful and fruit-forward wines are produced in impressive amounts.
Country: Argentina
Anyone who has been the Mendoza area of Argentina may be surprised to find that this is one of the primary wine regions of the country, now comfortably sitting as the fifth largest producer of wine in the world. The Mendoza is an incredibly dry and arid desert, which receives as little as two hundred millimeters of rainfall per year, and supports very little life at all. We can thank the ancient technologies of the Huarpes Indians for Argentina's current booming wine trade, as they managed to irrigate the region by digging channels from the Mendoza river, thus creating an area which had enough access to water with which to grow vines. Not only this, but the grape which Argentina primarily uses for their wines – Malbec – actually flourishes in such conditions, as it is less likely to suffer from the rot it so often finds in the considerably damper regions of Europe it has its origins in. Such expertise and foresight has resulted in Argentina being able to produce high quality wines of both red and white types, with Malbec, Bonarda and Cabernet Sauvignon dominating the vineyards for red wines, and Torrontés, Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc making up for most of the white wine produced there.