The Leo Expression of an Organic Malbec
My mother set the path and I followed her...
Jan de Weerd, Spoken Wines
This will hide itself!
The Leo Expression of an Organic Malbec
My mother set the path and I followed her...
On our wine tour through Argentina we spend a day with wine maker Ramiro Maures. He and his mom own Pulmary winery, right smack in the center of Chacras de Coria , Luján de Cuyo, which is just south of the city of Mendoza, Argentina. Ramiro is like his wine: expressive, energetic, demanding the center of attention, yet layers of complexity to discover. All the characteristics of a true Leo, which he happened to be!
How did it all start?
His parents planted a vineyard in Medrano, a small village 45 km’s southeast of Lujan. They were the first (!) in Argentina to certify their vineyard organic, back in 1998 when very few if any in Mendoza even talked about organic. The initial intent was to just sell the grapes, but the mother who was an art teacher had a calling to make her own wine. Ramiro followed her footsteps, quit law school and enrolled in the enology program at the National University of Cuyo.
Ramiro with his mom in front of the winery
Creating an attention grabbing, super flavorful organic Malbec
"Starting with nature, sprinkling it with science and applying art", as Ramiro describes the wine making process, the results are an incredible expressive, flavorful organic Malbec wines. Super interesting was the comparison of a 2023 fresh Malbec wine bottled straight from the concrete vat, where it was fermented and aged for about 6 months, to the exact same wine produced two years earlier that had aged for 18 months in 60% new American oak. The American oak imparts more coconut/vanilla flavors to the wine that Ramiro believes better complements Malbec. Both wines from the exact same source are high quality wines which you can tell when wines are well balanced from when you first take a sip to the lingering after taste. The unwooded, fresh wine is simply an explosion of flavors that is so vibrant and present and stays with you for a long time. The oaked reserve wine needed more time in the bottle as the well rounded oak tannins and flavors of vanilla, cedar and tobacco were still masking the powerful fruit underneath it. Only about $10 for the 2023 Organic Malbec and $30 for the reserve…. incredible values for these quality wines. I might have to move here 😁. We are really tasting the best of Mendoza in so many different ways and styles of wine.
