Special Offer for Chairman’s Circle Members…
How To Be Among The First Americans To Taste A Dark, Red Wine Found Only In The World’s Most Remote Wine Region
… Why America’s “Top Wine Explorer” Risked Death to Find A Lost French Grape
… The Shocking Truth About What’s In That Wine Bottle Sitting On Your Kitchen Counter
… How A Small Group of American Wine Lovers Get Exclusive Access to Wines Not Currently Sold In the US
… And so much more!
Dear Wine Lover,
When people hear that I run the only private wine partnership in America, they assume I sit around in Napa tasting the latest ultra-smooth (and overpriced) cabernet sauvignon…
…or that I’m always jetting off to France to taste the latest 100 point St Emilion (which, surprise!… tastes the same as the 89 pt St Emilion!)…
They don’t expect to hear about the time our truck overheated on a single-lane mountain road with fog so thick you could barely see ten feet in front of you…
…or the number of times I’ve been kicked, trampled, and bucked off by horses…
…or the amount of strange meat cooked over an open fire I’ve eaten… or the even stranger dinner companions I’ve had (from guys who own private planes…to cowboys who have never even seen one up close)
In my weakest moments… say, when I’m trapped in a flashflood at night in the middle of the desert…
…well, in those moments I do sometimes wonder why I’m in this business at all.
After all it, would be far easier to buy a few thousand gallons of bulk juice from the California Central Valley (or southern Australia), mix in some oak extract and “mega-purple” dye, then slap a ‘cool’ label on it.
(Very common in the mass market wine world… especially in most so-called ‘wine clubs’… and that’s not the half of it… more on that in a moment…)
Of course, the members of my private wine partnership would never go for that.
Not that we’re wine snobs…
…we’re just a group of Americans who got tired of those flimsy wines you find at most supermarkets – you know the kind… the cheap throat-burning reds…the syrupy yellow whites…
The mass market wine industry’s best-held secret is just how similar their process has become to manufacturing at a soda pop plant… or worse, an oil refinery.
First, the vineyards aren’t your traditional old world vineyards… there are no gnarled fruit trees offering shade to the old vigneron as he carefully prunes his vines… tasting a grape every few minutes to see how they’re coming along…
These industrial vineyards stretch out for acres and acres… planted in rows wide enough for giant pesticide sprayers and machine harvesters to pass through…
Like a chicken farm, the operators take no chances when it comes to their profit margin.
Is this the new reality of modern wine making?
The grapes are often overwatered to artificially fatten them up (more juice = more money). At the first hint of bad weather, they harvest the grapes still green… and later cover it up by adding more sugar during fermentation. (A lot of those popular wines from California and Australia you find on kitchen counters are notoriously sugary – even if they cleverly use acids and tannins to hide the sweet taste)
In mass market vineyards, machine harvesters aren’t precise enough to grab only grapes… so the resulting juice also contains bits of twigs, leaves, dirt, and even insects. So they run the wines through a centrifuge… then a micropore filter which completes the job of removing any trace of sediment… It’s a sterile, safe way to make wine… but the sediment is precisely what contains those special aromas, unique to each vineyard, that we all seek in our wine…
And by the way, I’m far from the only one saying this:
“Only in this century have we seen the hard-earned knowledge of the ancients discarded, almost overnight, in the name of progress… “[Winemakers] feel secure with a sterile wine. I say if it is sterile is not alive.” — Kermit Lynch
“Anyone who tells you that excessive…filtration does not damage wine is either a fool or a liar.” — Robert Parker
(Especially true for Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays… they get destroyed by this)
There’s a reason that modern wineries look more like oil refineries than the old “chateaux” behind legendary wines like Lafite or LaTour… …Modern industrial winemaking is all about meeting ever growing demand…any which way you can…
- When they can’t afford oak barrels… they used oak “flavoring” and other additives
- When the wine isn’t dark enough… they add purple dye called “Mega Purple” (far more common than you think)
- When the wine comes out cloudy with sediment from the soil and air… they use “fining agents” like potassium ferrocyanide (yes “-cyanide”)
- When the aroma’s not “big” enough… they add enzymes
- When it’s too flimsy or sugary… they add acids (which destroy any subtlety in flavor)
And that’s not including the chemicals that find their way into wine from the industrial growing process…
Would you drink wine made here?
Did you know that a 2013 study from France found traces of pesticides in 90% of wines sold in supermarkets? And a lab test of 10 Californian wines found the weed-killer glyphosate in every single bottle (the World Health Organization recently determined that glyphosate, the main ingredient in RoundUp, may potentially promote cancer).
You can see why the alcohol industry fights tooth and nail to keep ingredients off of labels, spending as much as $30 million for lobbying last year. You can also see why I go to such extreme lengths all to find a single bottle of wine.
Finding a wine that is truly “alive”… takes a little legwork…
That’s how I happened to find myself trapped in a truck… at night… in a flashflood all the way out on Argentina’s wild, northwestern frontier.
If you’ve had wine from Argentina before, it was probably from Mendoza. Mendoza’s a nice place – five-star hotels, ultra-modern wineries with all the latest gadgetry… they even have paved roads!
500 miles to the north… lies a little valley, surrounded by miles of desert on one side and the jagged peaks of the Andes mountains on the other… a valley known as the Calchaquí…
The Calchaquí Valley – The World’s Most Isolated Wine Region
Calchaquí wine is almost impossible to find here in America… you can’t even get it at the finest restaurant in Manhattan. Entire vintages sell out in 24 hours to private lists of rich private buyers. A single bottle – if you have to buy it retail – can go for over $500…
When I popped my first bottle of this bold wine… I first got a hint of smoke… vanishingly short (the locals claim it comes from cattle drive campfires that so often burn out on the high plains nearby) …then came the blackberry, the herbs, the leather… a hint of charred earth drifting across my palate… and an incredible, rugged mouthfeel.
In that moment, I was instantly transported… To a land where cowboys still sleep under the stars using their saddle bags as pillows …where women work looms in the early dawn’s first light …where the nearest city is six-hours away across a jagged mountain landscape … where a small brotherhood of winemakers – operating at what feels like the edge of the earth – follow a tradition 200 years old…
If you enjoy wine… if you’d like to taste wine as it truly should taste… then you need to sample an extreme altitude wine from the Calchaquí…
In fact, with your permission I’d like to send a bottle straight to your door. No middle men. No inflated prices. I’ll explain why I’m doing this in a moment… But first let me introduce you to the “wine from the end of the world”…
Wines from the Edge of the World
Argentina’s Northwest Frontier – The End of the World… The Calchaquí is squeezed between miles of desert and the jagged peaks of the Andes Mountains…
“Vast High Desert Plateau Above the Clouds” (where you’ll be glad to have a couple spare tires in the back)
After six to eight hours, you finally reach the literal “end of the road”… the Calchaquí Valley.
8,000+ ft. Above the World, the Secret to a Great Wine
Journey through this vast landscape… and you’ll hear gale-force winds ripping through nearby poplar trees… before they nearly blow you off your horse… You’ll find yourself suddenly short of breath in this thin atmosphere… (the locals claim the winds “drive away the oxygen”… and eventually you start to believe it!) Despite the heat, you’ll wear long sleeves and pants… to protect from the intense UV rays (the sun here is 80% more intense than Bordeaux) At night, you’ll add more layers as the temperature suddenly drops as much as 77 degrees!
Winemakers, they say, like their grapes to get a bit of challenge. But here, they cling to the edge of survival. Were they any other kind of grapes…they’d probably never make it…
Long Extinct in Europe, an Old Vine Lives on Here
Nearly two hundred years ago, a few brave souls carried malbec grapes across the Andes from a port in Chile. A good thing too…because after malbec arrived in Argentina, all the European malbec got wiped out (along with most of Europe’s grapes) in an event called the “The Great Blight.”
In fact, the European wine industry was only able to recover by replanting with vines from America. So when people talk about great French wines today… they’re not actually French at all! They’re American!
But the blight never touched the remote, isolated wineries of the Calchaquí. Today, the old French vines remain there today…much older than any you’ll find in Bordeaux. 30 years is considered old in most parts of the wine world… in the Calchaquí, a third of vines are older than 100 years…
That’s a tell-tale sign of extreme levels of resveratrol. Here’s what we found when we had a certified lab test our extreme altitude malbec against a common California red:
- 10 TIMES more resveratrol
- 93% less sugar
- 80% higher levels of anthocyanin (an antioxidant that lab and animal models suggest has a “anti-angiogenetic” effect, which is to say that it may inhibit tumor growth)
What Extreme Altitude Wine Does to Your Body
According to Harvard Professor David Sinclair, PhD, the chief benefit of resveratrol is NOT actually as an antioxidant. Rather, resveratrol activates what’s known as the “sirtuin pathway.”
The “sirtuin pathway” in grape vines is essentially what allows the vine to survive the extreme conditions of the Calchaqui. It’s one of the principal longevity pathways found in most plants and animals.
When the plant comes under stress, it becomes flooded with resveratrol, which activates this “sirtuin pathway” and changes the plant from weakling to ultra-resilient survivor.
Human beings also have a sirtuin pathway that works in the same way. For instance, sirtuins likely explain why fasting – which stresses the human body – appears to increase the human body.
So what does resveratrol have to do with our own sirtuin pathway? Well, scientists now believe that resveratrol passes into YOUR body…and activates YOUR sirtuin pathway just as it did in the plant.
Effectively, the resilience and longevity of the plant – hard won after years in the wilderness – is passed onto you!
“if you stress a grape, you’ll get great wine…but you’ll also get a lot of resveratrol…when we ingest resveratrol, we get the same health benefits as the plant…we get the benefit of the plant stress as longevity.” — Harvard professor David Sinclair, PhD
A Wine 200 Years in the Making
It’s a strange feeling when your car’s partway underwater and you’re still in it. Especially when it’s pitch black. Actually, it’s not a strange feeling at all. It’s panic.
A ways across the raging torrent – a wide, bone dry river bed just an hour before – a light flashed. Likely one of the vine workers with a flashlight. He had probably seen the headlights sink beneath the water.
My brother gunned the engine, hoping for the best. Then…a miracle. The front wheels caught on something – a log or a boulder? Just enough traction to propel the truck forward against the current on to a sandbank.
An old man with a flashlight came running over the truck The people of the Calchaquí don’t scare easily. After a lifetime up at the edge of civilization, their faces range to placid to imperturbable. Yet, this old man’s face showed something almost close to alarm.
Vino? we asked. Bueno… he replied.
Minutes later, we were sitting in an old gaucho bar way out on the frontier, uncorking a bottle.
Your Extreme Altitude Malbec (8,950 ft) (No Filtration, Natural Fermentation) “The Malbec from the Top of the World”
This isn’t just any wine… This malbec comes from the world’s 3rd highest vineyard… at 8.950 feet… To say importing a wine like this is rare would be an understatement…
Perhaps the most isolated vineyard in all the Calchaquí is Luracatao. At 8,950 ft. above sea level, it sits on a northerly slope completely surrounded by mountains. Nearby rocks soak up heat during, protecting the vines from freezing at night.
When winemaker Augustin Lanus used grapes from here to make wine for the first time… the inky color turned his stainless-steel vats red!
But it wasn’t just the rich color that surprised Augustin… Smelling the wine, he found aromas of olive grove and graphite that you don’t tend to find in lower altitude malbecs. On the palate, the fascinations just kept coming… cherry… black fruit… herbs… a touch of smoke… and even a dash of salt (ancient oceans that once covered this land millions of years ago)
He called the wine Sunal Ilógico…
A brilliant, intense wine
After England’s top sommelier, Phil Crozier, tasted Sunal, he wrote to Augustin:
“Amazing wines and a great story. I was very inspired…”
During a blind tasting with legendary wine curator, Joaquin Aberdi, Sunal came in N.1 in its category.
And critic Mariano Obrega named Sunal Ilógico his “N. 1 of 2018,” noting its “freshness” and “pure intensity”
But it isn’t just the taste that makes Sunal so special…
It’s packed with antioxidants (as I said before, up to 10 TIMES more than other wines)
It’s also clean and pure…
Sunal is naturally fermented with ZERO filtration…
Also, high-altitude growing conditions have virtually zero pests and fungus.
The higher you go, the less you need to coat your vines with antifungals and pesticides (as is necessary in wet regions like Bordeaux and Champagne).
Sunal is NOT available at your local supermarket or even that nearby fine wine shop.
Yet, I’d like to send a bottle of the Sunal Ilògico 2018 right to your doorstep.
Plus, I’ll also include five more bottles created in the shadow of the Andes Mountains… the best of what Argentine, traditional, small-batch winemaking has to offer.
Don’t worry – there’s no obligation for trying these wines.
And there’s no financial risk either…
More on that in second…
First, I want to tell you about the rest of the wines included in this fantastic collection of Argentine wines…
Also Included in This One-Of-A-Kind Argentine Collection…
Your Bottle of Finca Gualfin Tacana Malbec 2021 (8,421 ft)
Tacana is the Bonner’s very first wine – from Finca Gualfin – the Bonner family ranch, the wine which originally gave rise to the Partnership.
Pucarilla vineyard, discovered by Bill and his sons, is home to rows of old-growth malbec still on their original rootstock, completely unaffected by phylloxera.
Pucarilla sits at more than 8,400 feet of elevation, a tiny green valley high in the dry & rocky mountains.
Snowmelt and careful management of rainwater keep the vines producing.
Rich cocoa, dark purple fruits, soft tannins.
Fresh, free of cloying oak flavor, yet plush in mouthfeel.
An intense, layered experience.
Your Bottle of Colección Quinquela Malbec 2018 (91 pts)
The ancient Incan valley of Famatina is nestled between Salta and Mendoza.
Here, the La Puerta winery produces a big, yet approachable wine by blending malbec and cabernet sauvignon.
The result is an intense ruby red color with burgundy reflections.
Aromas of coffee, plum jam, ripe fruit, liquorice and cinnamon are intertwined with notes of vanilla and a touch of mint.
On the palate it is soft, with a medium body and sweet tannins that give it a long and elegant finish.
Your Bottle of Lamadrid Malbec Gran Reserva 2021
Lamadrid Estate wines are born from a delicate balance between the work at the vineyard and the vinification process.
Lamadrid’s mission is to be the best representation of its unique Agrelo terroir.
This beautiful and age-worthy expression of classic malbec comes from the 90 year-old Matilde vineyard.
It takes 3 vines to make just 1 bottle.
Deep purple.
Lavender, plum, blueberry, tobacco and licorice on the nose.
It’s medium-bodied with silky tannins and a juicy palate.
Fresh and fruity.
Your Bottle of Casarena Owen’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (93 pts)
In 2007, a group of friends began restoring an old sandstone winery from the 1930s in Luján de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina.
Owen’s vineyard is one of the oldest on their property.
Planted in 1933, it offers an astonishing variety of soils in a relatively small area, allowing winemaker Leandro Azin to make a well-balanced blend from these 82-year-old cabernet sauvignon vines.
The grapes go through a double manual selection of bunches and grains.
After careful destemming, the fruit undergoes a cold fermentation.
In the barrel, the wine undergoes spontaneous malolactic fermentation and clarifies naturally.
12 months in French oak brings further complexity & softens the tannins.
Your Bottle of Piloto de Prueba Malbec 2021 (91 pts)
In the heart of Argentina’s Calchaquí Valleys, in a little spot called Cafayate, two winemaking friends had a particularly good harvest one year.
With their best grapes, they decided to vinify their own small bottling — strictly for family and friends — despite the difficulties of making wine in the extreme location of the high Andean desert.
“Piloto”, the first effort, was so good that they have continued to craft it each year.
This is an extremely small batch wine – 3,200 bottles only.
The project was supposed to be a mere experiment for winemaker Daniel Guillen and his friends.
Today his is a label to watch closely.
Why all the buzz? Tannat.
It’s a grape from southwestern France typically found in Uruguay.
Yet, word on the street is that it may just be “the next malbec.”
While malbec remains king in the Andes, the tannat in this 2020 vintage makes a compelling case: wrapping the malbec and cab sauv in a rich, dark chocolate.
Open a bottle on a cold winter’s evening and just try to escape this wine’s warming embrace.
There may be a longer aging potential here.
Your First 6 Bottles of Dark Red Wines… (including the 8,950 ft. Sunal Ilogico 2019 & 8,421 ft. Tacana 2021)… Shipped (free!) Right To Your Doorstep…
You might assume these bottles are expensive… and they can be, depending on where you buy them.
(If you can find them at all…)
But they will not be expensive for you… for the simple reason that we don’t pay retail… and neither will you.
Americans have been trained to think that a good wine must be more expensive.
But that’s simply not the case.
Let me explain…
Let’s say a bottle costs $100 retail… how much of that $100 is actually paying for the wine?
About $20. That’s it.
The rest? Marketing costs and the layers of markups in the dreaded “3-tier system”…
But I’m able to bypass that system… it’s one of the many perks I enjoy as head of America’s only wine partnership, called The Bonner Private Wine Partnership.
And when you join us, you’ll gain that huge price advantage, too.
We’re a private group of wine lovers who source seldom-imported foreign wines directly… avoiding the usual middlemen, bad wine, or inflated pricing.
All year round, Diego, Barry, and me scour the globe for great wine, making deals directly with vineyards… mostly small batch places just like Sunal…
And that brings me to the wines I’d like to send to your doorstep today.
Your First Shipment Selection
- Your bottle of 2021 Tacana Malbec, from the Bonner family ranch, the wine which originally gave rise to the Partnership…
- Your extreme altitude bottle of 2019 Sunal Ilogico Malbec (8,950 ft)…
- Your bottle of 2018 Colección Quinquela, from Argentina’s “Sacred Valley” (91 pts)…
- Your bottle of 2018 Lamadrid Malbec Gran Reserva (91 pts), from 90 year old vines…
- Your bottle of 2019 Casarena Cabernet Sauvignon (93 pts) from 82-year-old cabernet sauvignon vines…
- Your bottle of 2021 Piloto de Prueba Malbec (91 pts) from Cafayate’s rising star…
And in addition to your wines, there’s something else I want to give you today, too.
While you wait for your collection to arrive, you’ll receive two special, exclusive e-books, written especially for club members by top international sommelier, Nigel Tollerman.
Nigel is a certified sommelier from Argentina’s top Escuela Argentina de Sommeliers.
You may have seen him on the Food Network and National Geographic.
I think you’ll find these e-books fun to read and highly educating…
As a fellow wine adventurer, they’re yours FREE to read and enjoy.
And you get access to them the instant you sign up…
You’ll also receive a bonus tasting video with our veteran Bordeaux winemaker Julien Miquel.
Julien has made wines all over the world, including at Chateau Margaux, perhaps the most famous winery in France.
He’ll take you through a virtual tasting for three of your wines making you an expert in Argentine wine by the time your bottles arrive.
(Adding a bit of knowledge adds a lot more enjoyment… and a much deeper, richer experience to your wine tasting…)
Journey through the world’s most extraordinary wine regions
Our quarterly selections transport you to different corners of the globe, each with unique traditions, terroirs, and stories.
Journey through the world’s most extraordinary wine regions
Bordeaux, France
Tuscany, Italy
Savor Sangiovese among cypress-lined roads and medieval villages.
Rioja, Spain
Experiences from our global community
I had no idea what real wine tasted like until I opened my first bottle from this club. It was like everything else I’d been drinking was just noise. This? It was alive—complex, smooth, and nothing like the syrupy blends at the store.
The International Living Wine Club has transformed the way I experience wine. It’s not just about tasting—it’s about connecting with the places, people, and traditions behind each bottle.
One sip of the Malbec took me straight back to a tiny restaurant in Mendoza where we drank red wine under the stars. I couldn’t believe I could feel that again… from my own kitchen.
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Why Choose The International Living Wine Club
- 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
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- Weekly Tasting Videos from Our In-House Wine Expert
About the International Living Wine Club
The International Living Wine Club is your passport to the world’s most extraordinary small-batch wines—sourced from remote, family-run vineyards across Europe and South America. In partnership with Bonner Private Wine Partnership, we deliver handcrafted, additive-free wines you won’t find in stores… and the stories behind them. No middlemen. No mass production. Just real wine, for those who crave something rare.
This is an auto-renew offer. Your International Living Wine Club subscription will renew quarterly and we will automatically bill your card to renew with our standard rate of $279 per quarter (6 bottles), or $439 per quarter (12 bottles), depending on your choice today. This way, you never miss a collection and maintain your membership, hassle-free.
WE CANNOT SHIP TO THESE STATES:
Arkansas, Delaware, Mississippi, Utah. If you live in one of these states, you’ll need to select an alternative delivery destination.
*Note: Shipping is available to Alaska & Hawaii for additional fee*
Please be aware: We cannot deliver to P.O. boxes. An adult signature is required for all shipments of alcohol.
A note about our Satisfaction Guarantee: Wines, sadly, are not like power tools. A hardware store can always resell a hammer you used a couple times. Not so for a bottle of wine. Once you pop the cork, it’s a total loss to us. For that reason, we cannot offer full refunds on these offers. But don’t worry, if the wine arrives and there’s something wrong with it, just give us a call and we’ll do what we can to make it right. As a member, your satisfaction is all-important to us.