Your Calchaquí Valley Wine Collection 2023 (Digital Booklet)

William Bonner
June 1, 2023

Dear Member,

The first time we brought winemaker Julien Miquel up to the Calchaquí Valley with us, he described a sensation of awe that almost bordered on fear. The vast, alien landscapes. The thin blue sky. Miles of dry desert plains flanked by jagged peaks. The Calchaquí is a place where an individual can lose his sense of scale—at least until he has a stiff drink.

This collection is, even for Calchaquí aficionados, a step outside our comfort zone.

You will notice only two single-varietal Malbecs. The winemakers of the Calchaquí are pushing the valley’s frontiers.

Raúl Dávalos—the reclusive force behind Tacana, RD, Mayuco, and many others—is experimenting with an 80-year-old plot of an indigenous grape known as Criolla Chica (no one is quite sure where it originated), alongside a new style he calls the “Beaujolais of the Andes.”

Meanwhile, winemaker Claudio Maza is determined to find wine grapes in places where wine grapes should not grow—like the bottom of a dry ravine that has witnessed bloodshed and disaster over the last 500 years.

Agustín Lanús has returned as well, this time armed with Cabernet Franc, a peppery grape originally from the Basque Country. Cabernet Franc is lighter-bodied, rarely bottled as a single varietal, and notoriously difficult to grow. Yet in the high desert—where extreme nighttime chill prevents overripening—it finds its edge, sharp as a razor-edged dagger.

And that is only the beginning of what this Calchaquí collection has in store.