And 3 Weeks Later

On Friday, we finished our internship after working three weeks straight, only four days of less than 12 hours. After working a half day, we celebrated the close of our time at Viña Cobos by having the usual Friday "asado" lunch together, except we had lomita sandwiches because the rain cancelled our BBQ. The team was very generous and gave us all amazing wine to bring back, a baseball hat and an incredible Viña Cobos asado knife with our name inscribed on each. Then after that, they let us have a tasting. At first we thought we were just going to try a few of their lower end wines, but each time we finished a flight, Pablo would bring more glasses. All the while we were joking with him about trying Cobos, their premium wine. Once we finished trying all the wines up through Braemare Vineyard Designation, Pablo brought two more glasses for each, along with a bottle of Cobos Malbec and Cobos Voltourno. We were completely floored. The wines were amazing. It was an unbelievable way to close our time there.

Off on vacation to Uco Valley, Cafayate, and Salta. More to come.


- Martin & Kate

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Grapes, grapes, grapes

Yes, we know we've been lacking on the blog posts. This week we've been on the night shift which means working normally 15 hours. It's become a completely natural amount of time to work. And it isn't too bad when we get to look at this from the top of the tanks while doing pump overs.





We are having fun and enjoying the Argentinean culture in the cellar.

Here are a few more snap shots.
Pump overs...


Draining and pressing a tank...





Cleaning tapones in the barrel room...





- Martin & Kate

BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Argentina

Harvest

We have been receiving fruit, spending lots of time on the sorting table and doing what seems like endless pump overs (although we aren't even at the peak yet). But some of our favorite memories of the "cosecha" have been out in the vineyard harvesting.





Pickers are paid by the bin with a token used to collect payment at the end of the day. Each token is stamped with the vineyard's name. After our short hours harvesting, we managed to get a few tokens.

This flag signifies the next available row to be picked.


Perhaps the best part of harvesting is the view.


- Martin & Kate

BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Argentina

First Vintage

Martin spent a day in the vineyard with Juan Igancio, one of the agronomists, taking grape samples from different parcels for crop estimation. Being the resourceful guy he is... Martin has asked if he could have the sample grapes once they were done using them for analyses. The first day of this, Martin received a few bag loads of Malbec grapes. He brought them home, hand-destemmed them and loaded them into tank #1 (a 5L water jug and later known as "Michi" in honor of the house cat). He cold soaked them for three days while adding grapes from Juan Ignacio's daily counts.


In addition to the Michi Malbec, finding ourselves with a surplus of grapes, Martin and fellow housemate, Hannah, decided to make two different rosé wines... One that was macerated with its skins for two hours and the other for about ten minutes.











After the cold soak, Martin asked one of the winemakers if he could have some yeast for his wines. That night, he inoculated his three tanks... Embarking on his first winemaking journey.


He directed to all housemate that we needed to assist with daily pump overs, which included any middle of the night bathroom breaks.

After a few days, Martin took Michi, SB and Spelino (the tanks) to the winery analyses. Michi was done! The others were halfway through fermentation.

That night, Martin excitedly pressed and bottled (so good that it doesn't require any aging) his first wine. He got a total of four bottles that are awaiting a special moment. Perhaps a Sunday night Argentinean family dinner.

- Martin & Kate

BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Av Acceso Sur,Luján de Cuyo,Argentina