Spotlight: Peter, the Argentine

This post is dedicated to Peter, who left a week ago to go back to his vineyard in Argentina. Peter is actually from the States originally but bought a vineyard in Mendoza about 5 years ago. He grows Malbec and Tempranillo and came to Wiemer to learn about white wine production and sweet wine production - he loves the sweet stuff and is considering planting Torrontes, a white grape, in his vineyard for sweet wine production. So our little mini cuvee of TBA Gewurz was a special project for him. (As a side note, we got a little more than one 375 ml bottle, so we had everyone here sample the extra. We are going to let the bottle chill out for a couple months and then meet up to share it. We suspect that the alcohol is around 12%, which is a little higher than we would have liked, but the wine has pretty aromas of lychee and grapefruit with a nice texture and sweetness on the palate. We are pretty proud of our efforts and the result!)

Peter's vineyard is called Los Vencejos, and it is named for the white-collared birds who swoop in after rainfalls. We tried his 2007 Malbec before he left and it was just beautiful - a full-bodied red with blackberry jam and spicy notes rounded out by vanilla flavors from new and old French oak. Peter imports the wine to California for shipping to certain states around the country - including NY! (http://www.losvencejos.com/)

At the winery we could always count on Peter to brew a pot of coffee before the night shift, and he was a champion when it came to polishing off the locally-baked donuts that Tim and Sandy would bring us. Although, I once ate 5 donuts in a day and everyone seemed to think that was excessive, but I bet Peter came close on some days and just never counted. On the days that he wasn't at work they never seemed to go quite as fast. Hope you aren't missing the donuts too much, Peter! I think we decided the closest Argentine equivalent would be churros... not quite the same...