Let’s get this straight right off the bat: the amount of ass that is being kicked right now by Twitter Taste Live is borderline-staggering. having been involved with TTL since its humble beginnings, it’s sometimes hard for me to conceive that TTL is barely over a year old, and it’s become the de facto on-line social wine experience. And yet, that’s exactly what’s happened. And that’s awesome.
Last week, Twitter Taste Live embarked on another new edition to their lineup of events, pairing up with Wines of Argentina to kick-off a month-long focus on Argentina’s wine regions, beginning with the extreme northerly area of Salta and including tweets from the winemakers based in the area (specifically bodegas Etchart, Colomé & Michel Torino, including Victor Marcantoni, Thibaud Delmotte & Alejandro Nesman).
When you’re checking out the wines of Salta, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Many of the vines are old, planted on non-grafted rootstock brought over from France during the phylloxera epidemic in Europe.
- Many of those vines are planted at some of the highest elevations in the world (regularly in excess of 5500 ft, some higher than 10,000 ft).
What does this mean for the wine? Typically, older vines yield less fruit, but the fruit they do provide is very concentrated in flavors and potential extract. Higher elevations tend to accentuate diurnal temperature variations, which can help in ripening [Note: that statement may be incorrect - see comments]. As you might expect, some of the wines we tasted last week were concentrated and rich, but over the course of six wines (2 reds, 2 whites from each of the three featured producers) we were treated to a surprisingly wide spectrum of tastes and styles, especially when it came to the flagship Argentine varieties Malbec and Torrontes. In fact, some of the Malbec was downright soft & fruity, and some of the Torrontes was elegant and almost refined.
It’s gotten me excited for the next round of tastings this week – hopefully we’ll see equally high quality and breadth of styles from the other winemaking regions of Argentina. In any case, I think TTL is onto yet another winning strategy.
Read on for a recap of the twitter feed from last week’s tasting…
<a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=00318cd312″ mce_href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=00318cd312″>Wines of Argentina TTL – Event #1</a>
Cheers!
(images: argentinastravel.com)
