VISITORS FROM US- ASADO at VINEYARD

On december 12th two Frenchmen from a well known importer in Washington DC and his collegue from South Africa visited our vineyard and tasted both our 2007 and 2008 wines. We had a traditional asado and Mario made a biodynamic presentation, showing our components.

2008 WINES- UPDATE

Following last visit and tastings of Alvaro we are heading for an excellent Malbec year again, which will surpass the good quality of 2007. The colour is very intense, violet. In the nose you can percieve blackberry, plumb and some earthy herbs aroma. In the mouth firm tanins and character. In January we will define the final blends in order to bottle the Alpamanta Estate 2008 product line.

The Cabernet Sauvignon, due to the early frost in april lacks a bid of maturity, but has also some interesting red fruit and herbs aromas, good body and solid ending in the palate

ALPAMANTA RESERVA 2007- READY

Our top premium 2007 wine, the Malbec Reserva 2007 is at its peak and will be bottled end of january 2009. Our winemaker Alvaro Espinoza has put together the wine tasting notes for this wine, which won the Gold Medal at last month's Malbec al Mundo, obtaining 94 points.

" Color intenso con tinte ciruela, aroma intenso a fruta negra, ciruela, madera fina, cedro, con complejidad y carácter, elegante. En boca de cuerpo medio mas con buen volumen, largo, de taninos maduros, con balance, elegante "

AUSTRALIA- OUR NEXT MARKET

We have signed an Agreement with Jed Wines to start selling our Alpamanta Estate wines in Down Under. First samples will be shipped to Australia at the end of december

ALPAMANTA RESERVA 2007- MEDALLA DE ORO

At the biannual international Malbec competition "Malbec al Mundo", organised by the OIV, we got an important award. Out of 300 participating Malbec wines from the whole world our top premium wine from 2007 (Alpamanta Malbec Reserva 2007) got the sixth highest points in a blind tasting held last week. This is an extraordinary reward for our first vintage, as it also represents the highest ranked Malbec from all 2007 wines presented at the competition.

BIODYNAMIC DAYS- PART 5

Our Fladen, which is fermenting in a barrel was still too humid to be taken out- we still have to wait and see how it develops over the next few months. On the other hand one of our 3 piles of kompost is already ready to be used for our vineyard.

BIODYNAMIC DAYS- PART 4

As a fresh copound we also prepared quartz powder blended with rainwater and filled into a dry cow horn- we burried the 2 horns close to the main entrance, where we are going to prepare the biodynamic garden

BIODYNAMIC DAYS- PART 3

Our third compound was squeezed oak stored in a deer's vagina on the back of a fresh cow head. After 4 months it was amazing to see how fresh and well maintained the compound turned out to be - it looked like a real organ.

BIODYNAMIC DAYS- PART 2

Our second compound was made out of squashed camomile filled in tripes, which my cousines Stine and Vibe made back in june. We made 2 sorts of quality to see the difference. The aroma of the premium was significantly more intense

BIODYNAMIC DAYS- PART 1

Last week we all met on the vineyard to burry out the biodynamic compounds we made in june. For the first time we collected own made compost and compound 501 and 504- hopefully we will already see some positive results at our 2009 harvest. In this gallery you see how we got the materials out of the 16 burried cow horns.

FIRST SALE TO DENMARK

The big day arrived- our first sale of Alpmanta Estate Wines was made to Skaelskoer in Denmark. My Mum, who passed away last year would have really been proud and happy.

Til dej min kaere Mor !!

We took the bottles, which have been stored now in bottles for 5 months and with the help of 6 girls cleaned them, checked the quality of each bottle and labeled them accordingly. Afterwards they were stored into 65 cases and put into a pallet. On august 22 in the evening a truck came along and took them tobe loaded to the long trip from Mendoza to Sjaeland.

PRUNING SEASON

As winter falls into this part of the world and the vines enjoy their well deserved rest our workers started pruning the 30 hectares of vines and bundle them together. The winter turns out to be very mild, so we could accomplish all these works by end of july and the could also find time to make more compost

ALPAMANTA- BRAND

Finally we got the green light to use Alpamanta as our brand for our wines. This Quechuan, local Indian word stands for "Love to Earth" or in wine terms "Terroir". We will use this to launch our 2007 wines- Alpamanta Estate Malbec 2007 and Cabernet Sauvignon 2007. We will have organic certification for the EU and for the US in 2008.

VISITING THE VINEYARD ON LABOUR DAY

We decided to spend the long weekend en famille, enjoying warm autumn days at the vineyard

BECOMING BIODYNAMIC

After our successful first harvest we started applying our first real biodynamic components on the vineyard. My cousins from Denmark (Vibe & Stine) came all the way to visit the vineyard and helped us with the individual tasks- making compost, spraying component 504 to the vineyard and preparing Fladen and other homeopatic components (Horns, fresh cow head etc, ). For 2 days we were busy and had a lot of fun

MALBEC PREMIUM & CABERNET

On Wednesday april 23rd we harvested the last grapes from Ojo de Vino, including 10.000 kgs of high quality Malbec and 18.000 kg of Cabernet sauvignon. Even though the grapes were already on the edge of dehydration, due to the frost of last week, we got very good concentration and excellent colour. Therefore the maceration process will be much shorter than last year and we will soon start fermentation.

HARVEST COMPLETED ON VINEYARD

On Saturday april 19th we finalized harvesting the red grapes on our vineyard. We got another 6000 kgs of Syrah, Petit Verdot, Merlot and Malbec. At the end of the day we transported the ripened grapes to Santos Bodega, where we will be processing 4.000 liters of this very special blend from this first vintage.

The technical details:

Brix- 28
Acidity- 4.15
PH- 4.03
Alc.- 16.2

We will make some corrections to lower alcohol levels and PH level

PROCESSING THE GRAPES- PART 4

The final step was to bring the metal container to the winetank. For this particular work and to act with gravity into place a small vehicle lifted the container 5 meters and 2 employees made sure they were droped in the right winetank.