Our Wines
Making wine involves a significant number of variables in our farming and winemaking activities. We control some of these but many are outside of our control.
We produce red, white and rosé wines using grapes produced from our small vineyards in the Uco Valley. The quality of our wines starts with the quality of the grapes that we produce. Each year we make various decisions regarding how we will farm each of our vineyards based on the quality (premium or super premium) of the grapes we plan on using in our winemaking plan. As with all agricultural activities, success is dependent on many weather related factors including late spring freezes, hail storms, zonda winds and rain during the harvest. All these factors will impact the quality and amount of our yields.
Winemaking begins once the grapes are harvested. We harvest all our grapes by hand. Winemaking decisions we make each year include the method of fermentation (Steel tank, barrel fermentation or co-fermentation), oak program (first or second use French oak barrels), bottle style, labels and various other packaging decisions for each wine we make.
Before our wines are bottled, however, we also must make some blending decisions. In Argentina, a single varietal must have at least 85% of that varietal in the bottle which allows winemakers one last opportunity to adjust the wine.
We also typically make a Bordeaux blend each year, which we call our Gran Corte, and this blend varies each year. Bordeaux style grapes include Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.
Friends frequently ask which are our favorite wines. Since we make at least 10 different wines (Red, White and Rosé) each year this is a tough question. Our wines are like our children (Jill is glad we only have three daughters). We don’t have favorites, although some varietals have some good and some challenging vintages, and others just need a little longer to mature.
Our Wild Idea has certainly been a bit more complicated than originally planned, but the joy of making wine includes dealing with the complexity and challenges of the farming and winemaking process, working with great agronomists and winemakers, making a variety of great wines and sharing our wines with friends who love our Story and our wines.
