Today, winesur.com (an online marketing arm for wineries in Argentina and Argentine wine in general) published an article that talked about Bonarda being the next “Argentine Wine”. Over here at Anuva Wines, we have been talking about Bonarda for the last 5-6 years, having fallen in love with its easy drinking, kind tannin style at the very beginning.
Among the other Bonardas we have worked with, the Mairena Bonarda, from Familia Blanco in Lujan de Cuyo, Mendoza, has consistently been the best out of all the Bonardas in Argentina. Argentine Bonarda is and always has been the “other red wine” from Argentina and at one point was actually more widely planted than Malbec (the boom of Malbec coming when the world started buying it).
Bonarda was known as “el patito feo” (the ugly duckling) prior to the introduction of modern wine making techniques that promote low yields (and thus better wine) because it was only ever used to make table wine in a “vino tinto” or “red table wine” fashion… and not varietal wine. But with vineyard’s like the Blanco’s have, at very high elevation (over 3000 feet), a downward angle toward the north (allowing the vineyard to capture more sunlight) and their particular location in Alto Urgarteche, they create the best Bonarda wine in Argentina. We say this because we’ve tried them all. Even some of the highly rated Bonardas do not compare to the Mairena.
It is our hope that at our Buenos Aires wine tastings, where we have everybody who comes try a Bonarda (not only to educate them on what Bonarda is, but the joys of Bonarda, and the fact that it is an emblematically Argentine wine), that people will leave jazzed up about this awesome wine and spread the word about it. There have only be 2 or 3 people EVER who have come to one of our wine tastings in Buenos Aires who had already heard of Bonarda…. and we are excited to spread the word!
Related posts:
- The Bonarda Varietal and 100% Bonarda Wine
- Mairena Bonarda 2006 and “Bonarda Argentino”
- Mairena Bonarda Reserva (Reserve Bonarda) 2008
- Argentina Wine Review – Mairena Bonarda 2007, Familia Blanco
- Argentina Wine Review – Mairena Bonarda 2009, Mairena Wines
