The OIV, International Organization of Vine and Wine, recently presented the first impressions of the 2021 harvest for the southern hemisphere. Argentina made a total of 10.1 million hl (preliminary figure, as the harvest has just finished). This is a decrease of 6.4%, due to frost in October 2020 and a number of hailstorms, 28 to be exact, according to the OIV.
We asked some of our favourite producers about their impression of the harvest.
“2021 was a very cold and rainy vintage. I think it is a very good vintage for my style, low pH, low alcohol, with good maturity, not bad!” says Juanfa Suarez at Finca Suarez in Valle de Uco. Constanza Pimentel at Bodega Caelum in Lujan de Cuyo agrees. “This year has been great in terms of quality in our case particularly. We have experienced low yields naturally, though, especially for the malbec. This means that we had a natural “green harvest”.
Hubert Weber, winemaker at Bodegas y Cavas Weinert in Lujan de Cuyo says “the whites and rosés are very promising, with a lot of fruit and nice structure. Reds are also promising, but with more variation in quality. Fruit, colour and structure are good to very good, just need to see what the capacity of ageing of the tannic structure of the wines will be.”
A strange thing happened this year in one malbec vineyard, Hubert tells us. 80% of the grapes were eaten by birds within a few days. He had never seen that happen in Mendoza since he came here, and that was 25 years ago (the only place we know that has major problems with birds eating grapes is New Zealand, although it does occur in some other countries too).
Travel: Go on a wine tour to Argentina and Chile with BKWine.
