Zorzal, 2018 "Eggo Franco" Cabernet Franc, Gualtallary, Uco Valley, Mendoza, Argentina
Zorzal Wines was established in 2008 by the Michelini brothers, Gerado, Matias, and Juan Pablo. The estate spans around 70 hectares in the Gualtallary sub-zone in Mendoza. By Argentinian standards, they would be considered a boutique winery producing a total of around 300,000 bottles per year.
Matias Michelini is considered to be among the pioneers of this region, advocating for picking earlier to achieve freshness and acidity. He has been instrumental at a number of projects in Gualtallary. His brother, Juan Pablo heads up winemaking at Zorzal assisted by Noelia Juri.
The Uco Valley in Southern Mendoza can be divided into three sub-regions, which can then be further sub-divided. From north to south we have Tupungato, Tunuyán and San Carlos. Today's wine brings us to Tupungato, which is bordered to the south by the Las Tunas River up to the border of Luján de Cuyo. Of the three regions, this is the largest with a little over 10,000 hectares under vine.
Today's wine is taking us to more specifically the sub-region of Gualtallary, which is likely the most famous of all the sub-regions in Tupungato if not perhaps the entire Uco Valley. There is about 2250ha under vine here. Gualtallary is not an official GI yet, but it is in progress. And in fact, some producers are proposing there be 5 GIs within Gualtallary because of the size and diversity of microclimates. Considering how famous this region is, the first vines were only planted here in 1992, because for the longest time the region was thought to be too cool for viticulture.
This wine is coming from about 2 hectares of vines that were planted in 2007 by growers near by at Tupungato Winelands. This area is in the northwestern part of the region and is among the coolest in Gualtallary. Zorzal sees great promise in Cabernet Franc, Noelia explained to me that for their own vineyards, their first planting of Cabernet Franc was in 2016 with about 1.5ha planted, and then another block of 7 hectares planted in 2020. For this wine, the vineyard sits at around 1300m above sea level. The cooling influence here comes mainly from altitude and the cool breezes that come down from the Andes mountains to the west. The soils here are alluvial soils that are derived from eroded materials from the Andes that were deposited here around 1 million years ago. In this particular site, they are mostly sand with a high percentage of large calcareous stones.
Now, getting into the winemaking side of this wine, Zorzal is the first in Argentina to work with concrete eggs for vinification, which they started using in 2011. So this wine is from entirely hand-picked fruit, destemmed, but they add back in about 10% of stems into the fermenter. Fermentation is with indigenous yeast in concrete egg at about 24C, and there is a post-fermentation maceration of about 40 days. Because of the conical shape of the egg, this eliminates the need to do any pumpovers or punchdowns, so it is a gentler form of maceration. Once the wine is racked off its skins, it is returned to concrete egg for aging for about 10 months before bottling.
Key wine facts below:
Producer: Zorzal Wines
Region: Mendoza
Sub-Region: Uco Valley
Sub-Region: Gualtallary
Vineyards: Tupungato Winelands
Soil: Alluvial origin. Sand-silt with large percentage of calcareous stones.
Alcohol: 14.5%
