We wrote in our October edition already on the differences between the old and the new world of wine. And how these are getting smaller and smaller. Recently, we received abundant evidence from practice, during a tasting by a French winemaker who knows how to squeeze the finest from the malbec grape in Argentina as well as in France.
Text Château Petri, image: Phebus
Indeed, WINELIFE was invited to Phebus, an Argentine winery founded in 1996 by Frenchman Hervé Fabre. This wine merchant was looking for investment opportunities in Argentina in 1992. After a long search, he became so impressed by the potential and quality of malbec that he bought his first vineyard on the spot. Perfectly located at the foot of the Andes in Luján de Cuyo, near Mendoza.
Special detail, this one was planted with very old vines of malbec. To cut a long (success) story short: together with his wife Diane, he became the first winemaker to make super premium (see the December edition) malbecs on the market. He combined his savoir faire, the talent to make wines with personality, with the special terroir of Patagonia, Mendoza.
The remarkable thing is that he is doing this at the same time in Cahors, a wine region in southwestern France. This is not entirely coincidental, along with merlot and tannat, malbec is the main blue grape there within the "Appellation d'Origine Protégée". When a unique domain, Prieuré De Cénac was also for sale there, the choice was quickly made. So these days, the couple regularly flies back and forth to make their wines in two completely different parts of the world.
Terroir grape
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