Travels in Argentine wine country: Finca Flichman
By John Schreiner
April 16, 2008
How do they do it? Finca Flichman’s wines in British Columbia include a tasty Malbec that sells for only $10.
Since all imported wines in the Liquor Distribution Branch sell at more than twice the landed price, this wine must leave Finca Flichman’s cellars at less than $4 a bottle.
How they do it is volume. The chief winemaker, Luis Cabral de Almeida, told me that he makes 5.5 million litres of this single brand. He makes it well.
Finca Flichman’s owners know all about big brands. Since 1998, this winery – founded in 1910 on vineyards dating from 1873 – was acquired by Sogrape, the big Portuguese wine group that also makes Mateus, the sparkling rosé whose popularity has endured more than 50 years.
Sogrape also knows about quality. They are significant Port producers, owners of Ferreira and Offley; and they produce some of Portugal’s top table wines. In the past decade, Sogrape has invested about US$55 million in Finca Flichman, transforming the wines and the quality at this historic producer. Luis Cabral de Almeida
Among other moves, Sogrape sent in some of its own technologists. Cabral, the winemaker, came from Portugal to Argentina in 2004. He has made 18 vintages now in the Sogrape group and he also spent a couple of years studying at Australia’s Charles Sturt University.
“The New World is much more open-minded than Europe,” he has discovered. “Here, we are very open-minded.”
Even before it was acquired by Sogrape, Finca Flichman was a large producer, making about one million cases of wine a year and selling most of it in the local market. Ten years ago, the per capita consumption in Argentina was about 90 litres annually (about six times the current Canadian consumption). Much of that was inexpensive everyday wine – wine a lot cheaper than the value-priced Malbec.
Today, Argentines are consuming about 35 litres per capita annually, as the younger generation is just as likely to order soft drink or beer. Wineries like Flichman have had to adjust, switching to producing higher quality wines and exporting them. This winery now exports about 70% of its wines.
Its volumes suffered during the transition but have rebounded. Last year, the winery produced about 1.1 million cases of wine.
The Sogrape investment transformed the winery. The vast oak vats of a decade ago have been replaced with stainless steel and with small oak barrels. Mostly French oak, winemaker Cabral explains. “French oak respects the fruit more than American oak,” he believes.
Significant capital has gone into replanting or extended Flichman’s 300 hectares of vineyards, half of which are not far from Mendoza at an elevation of 700 meters while the other half are at 1,100 meters, closer to the Andes. This arrangement affords Cabral a rich palate of flavours to work with. Plantings continue with, among other varieties, several clones of Touriga Nacional, Portugal’s premier red variety.
“It is important for us to make our wine a year before the crush,” he says. In other words, the time to start building in quality begins with pruning the vines after the previous harvest. This is a discipline that most wineries understand but that not all practise as diligently as Finca Flichman.
Cabral and his team make 29 different wines, most of which I was able to sample at leisure in a winery tasting room with a distractingly attractive view of the estate’s gardens and olive grove. Unfortunately, the LDB has chosen to focus on the value brands for the most part. Hopefully, some of the private stores are picking up other of the Flichman wines, such as its icon red, Dedicado, a blend of Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. It was among the top reds I tasted in Argentina.
The LDB’s selections start with that $10 2007 Malbec, a very quaffable red with aromas of spice and plums and flavours that included cola. This is deliberately fruit-forward, spending only three months on oak before being bottled.
Also listed is an $11 Cabernet Sauvignon and a $10 Syrah, both easy-drinking good value reds. The winery has several more refined Cabernet Sauvignons that do not appear to be available here. That’s a pity. They prove Cabral’s point that “Argentina has fantastic conditions to produce mature Cabernet.”
A good example of Flichman’s more ambitious reds that is here is its Gestos Shiraz 2006 ($18), an elegant wine with vibrant red berry and chocolate flavours. Half the grapes for this wine come from the higher altitude vineyards, accounting for the vibrancy.
The LDB would do well to list the winery’s superb Gestos Malbec as well, and perhaps dip into the rest of the deep Flichman portfolio, including the Chardonnays. What would be the value-priced Chardonnay if listed here just won a silver medal at the Chardonnay du Monde competition.
John Schreiner recently visited top Argentine wineries.
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