Travels in Argentine Wine Country: Bodegas O. Fournier
By John Schreiner
May 10, 2008
Built on a hilltop with a view of the Andes, the O. Fournier winery looks like a vast landing pad for visitors from outer space.
One of the top wineries in Argentina, it gets visitors from everywhere else, visitors who make the 90-minute drive south from Mendoza for the outstanding wines and to dine in the winery’s elegant restaurant.
The winery is a jewel in the rough, its breathtakingly modern architecture setting it completely apart in this farming region, La Consulta in the Uco Valley, one of Argentina’s best vineyard areas. It is, as owner José Manuel Ortega Gil-Fournier says, a winery that gets “into all the books” because of its design.
Ortega is an ambitious and focussed economist who has set a tough goal for this winery, which has just completed its eighth vintage. “We want to be the number one high-end winery in the world,” he says.
Improbable? Who can say? There is nothing wrong with aiming high.
Born in Spain, Ortega is a banker. His career included a stint in London with Goldman Sachs, during which time he began accumulating a $30,000 cellar of top Spanish wines. He intended to resell them for a profit but so far, he has not had time to deal with that. It was wine collecting that drew him into wine production.
In the 1990s, he was a vice-president with Banco Santander of Spain, responsible for investments in South America. When he realized the potential of Argentina for fine wines, he bought the La Consulta vineyard property in 2000. The Uco Valley’s vineyards generally are at higher altitudes than those of the Mendoza plains and that is perceived an advantage for making fine wines.
The three O. Fournier vineyards are at an altitude of 1,200 meters (3,950 feet). The vines are bathed in intense sunlight. There are hot days but cool nights, with temperature swings between night and day as great as 25 degrees. This makes for grapes with vivid fruit flavours and fine natural acidity.
Ortega had his architects design this dream winery but when the drawings were in, he concluded that he could not afford it. Then in early 2000, the Argentina peso collapsed, accompanied by financial chaos during which banks were closed.
It was a disaster for Argentines but a godsend for Ortega, who now could afford the dream winery. All he had to do was to finance the contractors, since they could not get bank financing. The three-level gravity-flow winery, all stainless steel and glass, cost 2.3 million Euros, only a half a million Euros more than a plain Jane winery would have set him back. The winery was ready by the 2003 vintage,
Future plans call for a luxury hotel. For the time being, visitors who choose to stay overnight at the winery can book one of the winery’s seven “rural” cottages.
Designed not just for the eye but for function, the winery is a winemaker’s dream. In vintage, the grapes are trucked up elegantly curved ramps at the front of the winery. Here, they are dumped onto sorting tables. After being crushed, they fall into fermentation tanks one level below. After fermentation, the wines are racked into the cellar below, which has the capacity for 2,800 barrels.
The winery’s vast expanse of windows allows winery visitors to see everything there is in a working winery, from the winemaker perched in a glassed-in office overlooking his empire, to the tidy cellar. And the walls are always hung with canvasses by an ever-changing brigade of international artists.
The O. Fournier wines have not yet been listed in the British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch but it is only a matter of time. Ortega showed them here for the first time at the 2008 Vancouver Playhouse Wine Festival.
In a winery tasting, I found the wines as remarkable as the winery. The top label is Alfa Crux. I gave the 2005 Alfa Crux Malbec 93 points. Just a point behind was the 2003 Alpha Crux red, an intriguing blend of Tempranillo (50%), Malbec (40%), and Merlot (10%).
The winery also has a line of wines under what it calls its Urban label, with edgy photos of urban scenes and young urbanites. While the label art does not connect with me, the wines certainly do. They all scored between 87 and 88. I would like to see the LDB bring in the Urban Torrontés: that is Argentina’s flagship white variety, an exotically spicy dry wine.
Perhaps the most unexpected discovery at this winery was the 60-seat restaurant where we were served one of the best meals we had during three weeks in Argentina – even though it would be fair to say that the winery is out in the boonies. The chef is Ortega’s wife, Natalia. Her kitchen manages to lift the O. Fournier wines to yet another level.
John Schreiner recently visited top Argentina wineries.
goodgrog@shaw.ca
Visit PlanitBC's weekly Spotlight on Wine feature.
