Bodega Noemia J. Alberto

The colour is a vivacious Bordeaux-red, very intense, dark and pure. The bouquet brings toasty aromas with blackberries and coffee. Flavours of violets, cedar, rich black fruit, vanilla and overtones of rosemary. High-toned palate of violet and vanilla, with ripe blackberry and boysenberry fruit. Stays bright and open-knit though the finish, with spice and graphite notes.

Patagonia’s Rio Negro Valley is 620 miles south of Buenos Aires in the middle of the desert. Viticulture is made possible by irrigation channels excavated by British colonists in the 1820’s. These carry water from the region’s two rivers, the Neuquen and the Limay, fed with snow-melt from the Andes. Hans Vinding-Diers is the Danish, South African born, Bordeaux-trained winemaker at Noemia. Having made wine in Australia, Chile, Uruguay, pain, Portugal, and Hungary he was consulting for a winery in Patagonia when he discovered a library of wines from a winery in the area with vintages going back to the 1930’s. The wines blew him away with their freshness, intensity and elegance and he determined to find a vineyard from which to source fruit of his own. After two years of searching he found the Mainque vineyard, ancient and abandoned, with 3.7 acres of massale selection vines planted in the 1930’s and 1950’s, mostly Malbec. Countess Noemi Marone Cinzano came in as a partner and so was born Noemia.