Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Bold and super-fresh (slight reduction) this is an extremely expressive red with attractive cherry, blueberry, herbal and savory notes. You need to like tannins and acidity to get excited about this, but their interplay is exciting. A great food wine.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Always one of the best values in Argentina and a flagship of the variety and winery, the 2017 Colonia Las Liebres Bonarda Clásica is an easy-to-drink, juicy wine from parral vines in Luján de Cuyo. It fermented in stainless steel with indigenous yeasts and aged in concrete vats to allow the grape to keep its full personality without any contact with oak. It's characterful and has the varietal personality, a little rustic, with juicy fruit and a chewy texture, really good with food, a lightish wine of thirst. This wine clearly overdelivers for the price. 20,880 bottles produced. It was bottled between August and December 2017.
Bonarda is a name given to a handful of distinct grape varieties, mainly growing in Italy and in Argentina. In Lombardy’s Oltrepò Pavese and Emilia Romagna’s Colli Piacentini zones, the grape called Bonarda is actually Croatina. In Novara, Bonarda Novarese, often blended with Spanna (Nebbiolo), is actually Uva Rara. DNA profiling shows that most of the Bonarda in Argentina is actually identical to California’s Charbono—and Charbono is actually the Douce Noire grape from Savoie. Somm Secret—Bonarda Piemontese, an aromatic variety, is the only true Bonarda. Before phylloxera, it covered 30% of Piedmontese vineyard acreage.
With vineyards tretching along the eastern side of the Andes Mountains from Patagonia in the south to Salta in the north, Argentina is one of the world’s largest and most dynamic wine producing countries—and most important in South America.
Since the late 20th century vineyard investments, improved winery technology and a commitment to innovation have all contributed to the country’s burgeoning image as a producer of great wines at all price points. The climate here is diverse but generally continental and agreeable, with hot, dry summers and cold snowy winters—a positive, as snow melt from the Andes Mountains is used heavily to irrigate vineyards. Grapes very rarely have any difficulty achieving full ripeness.
Argentina’s famous Mendoza region, responsible for more than 70% of Argentina’s wine production, is further divided into several sub-regions, with Luján de Cuyo and the Uco Valley most noteworthy. Red wines dominate here, especially Malbec, the country’s star variety, while Chardonnay is the most successful white.
The province of San Juan is best known for blends of Bonarda and Syrah. Torrontés is a specialty of the La Rioja and Salta regions, the latter of which is also responsible for excellent Malbecs grown at very high elevation.