Winemaker Notes
-Wine Enthusiast
The Malbec grapes are sourced from two mountain vineyards, both planted more than 50 years ago. The grapes are hand-harvested into small lugs, hand-sorted, crushed and cold-macerated at the winery for 4 days. The wine is then fermented at controlled temperatures with native yeasts in stainless steel for 15 days and inoculated with the winery's own malolactic organisms. After this it is aged for 8 months, partly in French barriques, partly in stainless steel. The result is a wine of rich bouquet, lively mouth-feel, lingering flavors of red and black berries with undertones of black pepper and vanilla, and a velvet texture throughout.
Founded by Patricio Reich, with the collaboration of world-renowned winemaker Alberto Antonini, Bodega Renacer prides itself in bringing consumers the very best wines from South America’s unique terroirs. The winery structure itself is quite impressive, featuring a medieval tower built of rocks with state-of-the-art winemaking equipment. Renacer’s vineyards are located in Perdriel, a unique zone in Mendoza, Argentina, where the soil, altitude, climate and water come together to create the perfect growing environment for Malbec. In addition to Renacer’s more than 35 hectares of Malbec vines, the winery also purchases grapes from local producers in order to take advantage of Mendoza’s many terroirs — those in the Uco Valley, Lujan de Cuyo and Medrano. Vineyards used for Renacer’s bottlings are more than 50 years old and have very low yields. Through hundreds of years of trial-and-error experimentation, French winemakers have recognized that certain areas within a single vineyard produce grapes with different characteristics than other areas within that same vineyard. Thus, fruit from different sections within one vineyard, farmed the same way, harvested at the same time by the same method, and produced into wine with the same technique, can be dramatically different. The soils play a significant role in these differences for each unique terroir within a vineyard. Due to natural geological processes, soil properties can vary over distances as small as a few meters. Recognition of these small-scale variations within a vineyard can lead to wines that better reflect the terroir. Precision viticulture is an indispensable method to work the soil according to its true potential. Renacer determines these variations using digital maps obtained by Electromagnetic Conductivity Measures (ECM). The system registers 1,000 readings per hectare, which are then precisely stored and evaluated by computer and GPS to obtain their exact location within the vineyard. The result is a detailed map of the soil for precise vineyard optimization. This map allows Renacer to divide vineyards into homogeneous areas that are treated similarly in terms of irrigation and harvest time.
Most distinguished and celebrated from Argentina’s Mendoza, Malbec has seen runaway success since the early 2000s. Mendoza’s agreeable, continental climate with hot, dry summers and cold snowy winters allows the perfect conditions for growing outstanding Malbec. This grape is easy to like for its lusty, deep flavors and aromas of blackberry, plum, red cherry, autumn spice and tilled earth. It’s easy to find delicious, fruit-driven, affordable everyday examples and in prices beyond, quite exceptional ones with dense, supple textures that make them capable of aging.