Now where was I? Ah yes, black teeth and black tongued after the first day’s tasting. Well now I am in exactly the same state but not quite so jetlagged after tasting 110 wines on the second day. I continued to be in a panel with French sommelier Henri Chapon and Argentine wine producer Pedro Marchevsky but we went at it with a will this morning. And Pedro, “half viticulturist, half philosopher”, as his wife Susana Balbo described him to me later, was much happier today because the wines were so much better. Giving relatively modest marks to fellow Argentine wine producers seemed to exhaust him yesterday whereas today he went at a cracking pace. And after one particularly glorious line-up of nine Mendoza 2005 Cabernets, to which I gave two golds and two silvers, he beat his chest triumphantly through his Lacoste jumper (did I tell you it’s cloudy here?), gave a broad smile and said “I feel very proud.”
It would be fair to say that his marks were consistently higher than Henri’s and mine throughout the day, although this was not apparently a common phenomenon. If anything, Carlos Tizio was marking more severely than Oz and Robert from the sound of things. And I don’t think either Roberto de la Mota or Daniel Pi suffered like Pedro from the agony of criticising their fellow Argentine winemakers.
The 2005s generally looked very promising with lots of ripe fruit but real intensity of flavour too. Wine producers are also talking up the 2006s but we tasted exclusively red wines today so were concerned with older vintages. There were some very good 2004 Malbecs but Cabernets had a tougher time ripening fully in 2004. Talking of weather. we woke up this morning to lowering dark grey clouds on the Andes and this phenomenon, much cloudier and cooler than most Mendoza summer days, is forecast to persist through tomorrow when we are due to have our only few minutes of free time. This is not in the script!
It’s incredibly difficult to find a moment to catch one’s breath and even write this (I have had to get up at 6am to finish it) as the Argentines are determined that we should experience the extraordinary revolution in restaurants and tourism that Mendoza has seen over the last five years. This really would make a great place for a wine trip, with masses of tourist-oriented bodegas within easy range of the town and no shortage of keenly priced restaurants with all sorts of cultural influences coming into play. (Hardly anyone we have spoken to seems to be more than first or second generation Argentine.)
Monday night’s dinner was at Francis Mallmann’s 1884 (address Belgrano 1188 – oops), arguably Mendoza’s best known restaurant in a very stylishly decorated historic property just next door to one of the old wineries that Catena bought years ago (where I remember lunching on my very first trip here back in the mid 1990s organised by Buenos Aires food and wine writer Derek Foster to whom I owe thanks). Wines then were often more like rustic syrups than anything recognisable today. How things have changed!
On Monday night I sat opposite Laura Catena (who displayed a commanding grasp of the relative merits of resveratrol and procynadins) and enjoyed her Catena 1996 Chardonnay that was still in great nick (rather better than many 1996 white burgundies) and her Alta Catena 2004 Malbec which was looking good. You may remember my enthusiasm for their regular Catena 2004 Malbec, a recent wine of the week. I was dying to taste Argentina's famous chimichurri sauce with my massive steak, but Laura regards it as a "wine killer" and the 1884 version is rather suaver with less chilli than the one of blessed memory at a particulalry delicious asado (barbecue thingy) in 2002.
Mendoza seems like a magnet to wine and food people from all over the world. The city is buzzing, not least by having just hosted the Masters of Food and Wine event, a sort of alternative to Food & Wine magazine’s high profile event in Aspen. I sat next to Maricel Presilla, the Cuban-born, medievalist turned author of a massive, forthcoming tome on the history of Latin American cuisine (Norton, later this year) who is also a prominent New Jersey restaurateur (Zafra and Cucharamama in Hoboken) and expert on chocolate. (She was very sniffy about Fairtrade.) My flight problems were as nothing compared to her attempts to escape snowbound New York. Opposite her was David Smith, ex ITN news correspondent who, with his Argentina wife, has bought a vineyard here but is based in Washington with the UN.
As I was coming down in the lift to taste this morning, an unknown American fellow guest greeted me “how are you, Miss Robinson?” (so much more polite, Americans than Brits) and I bumped into Agusti Peris, ex sommelier at El Bulli and arranged to meet him in the evening for a glass of Tapiz Sauvignon Blanc (arguably the most fashionable grape variety for Argentines today).
Another interesting character we’ve met is Maria Mendizabal, a young woman who came top in an Argentine sommeliers’ competition and part of her prize was to judge with each of our four judging panels in these wine awards. But she has explicitly been required to stay silent. It must be torture to listen to our European pronouncements on the wines she knows so well and not be allowed to contribute.
In between morning and afternoon sessions we were marched smartly one block from the Hyatt by Jose Zuccardi of the eponymous family bodega for a delicious lunch of antipasti (already set out at our places – clever) and no fewer than three pasta dishes at Francesco where the extremely warm Italian female chef/patron still makes all the pasta. And hugs us all.
We do indeed feel hugged, if occasionally bludgeoned by the wines. At least Henri, Pedro and I managed to finish tasting our 110 by 6pm (just) on our second day. Poor Oz, Robert and Carlos finished barely a whisker before our 8pm departure for yet another delicious meal at Bodega Tapiz’s smart Terruño restaurant just outside the city. In a historic Victorian upper room that had something to do with the railway originally but I’m afraid I was just too exhausted to take in the finer points of Mendoza history by then. Zzzzzz.
On Wednesday we battle it out to decide on the gold medals and trophy winners – and retaste wines where different panels had entirely different marks for them. Sounds like another long session.