WineLovers Discussion Group

Greetings to everyone. Thanks to Robin for hosting me here and to Bob Parsons for the heads up to join. I look forward to contributing.

I'm a 37 year-old finance guy turned Wine Merchant & Foodstuffs Trader. I have a 50% interest in a Buenos Aires based Wine Merchant House, after having been one of its first customers. I keep telling myself the reason for having bought half the place was because I got tired of paying retail price to fill my cellar... I started to get serious about wine some 14 years ago; when as a young banker knowing your wines was the thing to do. I went on to work & live in 5 countries where as my interest developed into a real passion I embarked on a personal crusade to make Argentine wines better known to wine aficionados in every city I lived.

Argentina is still a greatly unknown and misunderstood wine country, and aside from my now business interest I try to help people tackle their doubts & fears when confronted by a wine from Mendoza, Salta, or Patagonia.

My (personal) cellar is Argentine dominated, but I have a thing for Austrian Dessert Wines, Champagne, and California Cabernet based blends. Ive recently acquired more interest in Australian & South African wines, and labels from these two areas will probably continue to grow as part of my personal collection.

Aside from the wine business, I have an interest in a Foodstuffs Trading venture active in food ingredients & flavoring focusing on the markets of the ASEAN countries.

Bienvenidos, Alejandro, a este rincon del mundo de vino!!

I don't buy many wines from Argentina. One exception is Susana Balbo's Crios wines, especially the whites and Rose.

We have an Argentine restaurant a couple of miles from the house, which, besides having nice food, has an incredible (and inexpensive) wine list and collection [ http://www.reginaargentina.com/index.html. We have enjoyed a number of different Malbecs, Cabs and other Argentinian wines there, though they are at the low end of the price scale. I have found them to be nice food wines, and one, I wish I could remember the name now, to be quite complex.

Let us add our welcome. We are regular consumers of Argentine wine and belong to the minority that believes that Argentines do just as good a job with Cabernet Sauvignon as you do with Malbec. Many exceptional values with these.

Cheers, Carl

Welcome Alejandro. Glad to have you join us.

Welcome Alejandro! I'd be quite interested to learn about your favorites in Austrian dessert wines. I've only recently started to try austrian dry rieslings (Brudlemayer, Gobelsberg, etc) and have a few Hopler stickies around but thats about it.

Good to see you here finally Alex!!! Now we can really talk Argentina!!

Welcome. I've got a bottle of Cab Sauvignon in my cellar from Sonoma winemaker Paul Hobb's Argentinian venture. I also love Malbec as a varietal, so I'm sure I will be adding more Argentinian wines

Alejandro, welcome to the forum. Looking forward to learning about Argentinean wines from you. Do you have any dealings for your food business here in the Philippines?

Bienvenido, Alejandro. Ojalá que se pasa bien aquí.

Personally I think we should give Alejandro a proper welcome, by going to visit him in person! That way, he can show us first-hand what Argentina is doing, wine-wise, and why it is still misunderstood. All of this as a business expense, of course!

Un chiste, Alejandro. Unless, of course, you'd actually like to bring me down, in which case I'll start brushing up on my Spanish!

Hi, Alex, and welcome! I've been delinquent in failing to greet you in this thread after having chatted with you in E-mail, but please let me add my formal forum welcome. We're glad you found your way here and hope you'll hang around!

Welcome to the forum Alex. It's great to have someone from Argentina on the board. I am really getting to love the malbecs. There are a lot of different styles of them out there. Last night I had a nice simple Montes Malbec which went great with some take out pizza.

James Dietz wrote:Bienvenidos, Alejandro, a este rincon del mundo de vino!!

I don't buy many wines from Argentina. One exception is Susana Balbo's Crios wines, especially the whites and Rose.

We have an Argentine restaurant a couple of miles from the house, which, besides having nice food, has an incredible (and inexpensive) wine list and collection [ http://www.reginaargentina.com/index.html. We have enjoyed a number of different Malbecs, Cabs and other Argentinian wines there, though they are at the low end of the price scale. I have found them to be nice food wines, and one, I wish I could remember the name now, to be quite complex.

Thanks for the welcome Jim. Availability of the best Argentine wines is still patchy in many markets outside the huge metropoli. Still, I trust that as importers & distributors continue to work on marketing and consumer awareness, even the higher end wines will continue to trickle down to all markets. Have you checked for Argentine wines in the large LA retailers? California is in general quite good for Argentine wines.

Carl Eppig (Middleton, NH wrote:Let us add our welcome. We are regular consumers of Argentine wine and belong to the minority that believes that Argentines do just as good a job with Cabernet Sauvignon as you do with Malbec. Many exceptional values with these.

Cheers, Carl

Hi Carl. Yes... I think that Argentina is many times branded as a one varietal producer. People know Malbec, Malbec, and.... Malbec. If someone is really keen on Argentina maybe they know Torrontes...

I think that Cabernet, and Cabernet component blends are a very interesting area to explore. Im surprised about the still relatively little interest that importers show for these wines.... but Im confident things will change in the future. I also think that Sparkling wines are also grossly overlooked.... ist still quite a "secret" here that the best sparkling wines (many made by the same French hands that make the likes of Krug and Dom Perignon) are of very high quality, although they do have a different style & character to what Champagne produces.

Bill Buitenhuys wrote:Welcome Alejandro! I'd be quite interested to learn about your favorites in Austrian dessert wines. I've only recently started to try austrian dry rieslings (Brudlemayer, Gobelsberg, etc) and have a few Hopler stickies around but thats about it.

Hi Bill. Im a huge fan of Alois Kracher, to give you a name that is widely known. However, you dont have to go as high end as that to get terrific wines. One small & relatively obscure producer (Weinrieder) makes some great wines in both the white (and red) dessert wine category.

Bob Parsons Alberta. wrote:Good to see you here finally Alex!!! Now we can really talk Argentina!!

No, thank you Bob - for pointing me in the direction of this board.

Brian K Miller wrote:Welcome. I've got a bottle of Cab Sauvignon in my cellar from Sonoma winemaker Paul Hobb's Argentinian venture. I also love Malbec as a varietal, so I'm sure I will be adding more Argentinian wines

Brian-- thats a very nice bottle you have there. Its the Bramare Cabernet Sauvignon. Hobbs partners with the Marchiori Family at the Viña Cobos estate in Mendoza to make these wines. the Bramare is the second label of their premium line of wines, they have a lower prices line called Nativo, and their flagship range is called Cobos.

Bramare has a Chardonnay (a big, oaky/buttery wine inspired on the big California Chards), and also a Malbec.

Jay Labrador wrote:Alejandro, welcome to the forum. Looking forward to learning about Argentinean wines from you. Do you have any dealings for your food business here in the Philippines?

Hi Jay, I currently do not do any business in the Phillipines.

Robin Garr wrote:Hi, Alex, and welcome! I've been delinquent in failing to greet you in this thread after having chatted with you in E-mail, but please let me add my formal forum welcome. We're glad you found your way here and hope you'll hang around!

Thanks again for the welcome, Robin. I hope to be able to contribute and help those with interests in Argentine wine.

Thanks, Alejandro. I've had (and love) Kracher's wines but you are right, they get costly. I'll have to look for Weinrieder.