Vendimia is the spanish word for grape harvest. It signifies the action, but it is also applied to the time of year in which grapes are picked. In Mendoza, that time is now, and for the few weeks that vendimia lasts, it dominates everything. Each district has its own vendimia celebration through january and february, and then finally in early march there are parades with floats in the capital city. There's a traditional pageant in which a "vendimia queen" is chosen, a gay pageant that mimics it, fireworks, an artsy show in an amphitheater, wine parties everywhere...
Paralell to all this, local news talk about disagreements between grape growers and wine makers about what the fair price of grapes should be. The weather can play foul, too: sometimes you're about to begin harvesting, and your grapes are hit by hail, which may knock off as much as 90% of your production...
Right after the 2001 crisis my dad and his brothers pooled together the savings left from the disappearance act managed by the Argentinean banking system at that time and started a tiny winery. Years before they'd bought a couple of hectares of near desert land in Maipú; now they put it to use by building a shed to house the fermentation tanks and other equipment made by one of my uncles at the metalurgical workshop he works at. On the rest of the land they planted some vines (Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and even a little Chardonnay) that are cared for, on a rotational basis, by each of the associates. A cousin made a website to publicize the business and voilá... they had a vacuum cleaner that's been sucking in money since then. Since the production capacity of the place is so small, their strategy has been to make real good wines, but still, our enologist says that time is needed, that creating a market for a wine is a slow process... This year it seems they might in fact break even...
Anyway, the nice thing about this little winery is that the whole family gets together during vendimia. We pick our own grapes and, assessed by an enologist, we even make our own wines. Of course, i say "we", yet living abroad, this will be the first year i'm part of all this. I'm really excited about it, and i'll keep you updated.
Some things we see, some we hope to, and some we are probably never even able to conceive of.
About Me
- MARIANO
- A mostly fictitious spokesperson for a fluke arrangement of mental pathways.
2 comments:
I remembering visiting your family winery, small, but with a fantastic Malbec! Still I can sit in my lonely room with some cheap box-malbec wine from Chile and think back to the times when your brother drove me up the moutain to the big statue near Mendoza and told me about the festivals in March. We even drove by the amphitheater where everyone would come and celebrate the wine - sweet sound in a Danes ear!
Creo que hay pocas cosas en esta vida tan hermosas como la vendimia, simple pero que requiere a la vez un alto grado de cuidado, paciencia y conocimiento. Hay algo mágico en ese proceso en el que la uva se convierte en vino. :)
Me alegro mucho que estés de vuelta, ya echaba de menos saber qué es de tu vida. Yo últimamente también he estado algo perdida pero todo sigue en una línea buena por aquí. Se ve que te está sentando bien la Argentina, ya lo decía mi abuela "la cabra siempre tira al monte" jajajaja.
En fin te mando un beso enorme Mariano
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