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750ml
Bottle:
$21.94
The 2018 Rosé Pinot Noir from San Pablo, Uco Valley spent 40 months aging with yeast. Coppery in hue. The nose...
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Winery
Alma 4
Vintage: 2012
2012 has, so far been a positive year for wineries around the world. While it may be a little too early to speak of the wines being made in the northern hemisphere, European and North American wineries have already begun reporting that their harvesting season has been generally very good, and are predicting to continue with the kind of successes they saw in 2011. However, 2012 has been something of a late year for France, due to unpredictable weather throughout the summer, and the grapes were ripening considerably later than they did in 2011 (which was, admittedly, an exceptionally early year). French wineries are claiming, though, that this could well turn out to be advantageous, as the slow ripening will allow the resulting wines to express more flavour and features of the terroir they are grown in.
The southern hemisphere has seen ideal climatic conditions in most of the key wine producing countries, and Australia and New Zealand particularly had a superb year, in particular with the Bordeaux varietal grapes that grow there and which love the humidity these countries received plenty of. Also enjoying a fantastic year for weather were wineries across Argentina and Chile, with the Mendoza region claiming that 2012 will be one of their best vintages of the past decade. Similar claims are being made across the Chilean wine regions, where Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon had an especially good year. These two grape varietals also produced characterful wines on the coastal regions of South Africa this year.
Varietal: Champagne Blend
There are few areas in the world with a reputation quite as famous and respected as that of Champagne in France, and almost every wine region on earth has imitated or has been influenced by the careful process mastered by the wineries of Champagne. However, it is in the grape varietals which thrive in this region where the secrets to the Champagne's success can be found – the acidic, flavorful Chardonnay grapes meeting the characterful Pinot Noir varietal, and coming together to produce something wonderful in the bottle. There are actually seven varietals allowed by French wine law for the production of Champagne wines, all of which are used by wineries to accentuate each others finest points and maintain the reputation of this very special region, the home to some extremely high quality grapes.
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.