Will's Adventure to the Vineyard, Pt. II

Editor’s Note: Today, Bill’s eldest son, Will, continues the story he started last weekend about a trip to Gualfin in Argentina that nearly killed him…

… and about the exciting experiment that resulted.

The first time I almost died in a flash flood, we were driving up a dry riverbed under an overcast sky.

We were on our way back from Pucarilla, the little valley in Argentina where we grow grapes for our Tacana wine.

Looking up the riverbed, I suddenly saw what looked like a thin, gray snake working its way down the incline towards the truck.

And then, the white wall. A roaring mess of white water, charging down the riverbed straight at us.

My father, Bill, shifted down and gunned the engine, turning sharply up a rocky bank to our right.

The truck didn’t make it far up the bank. It got stuck on a large boulder, all four wheels spinning helplessly.

We leapt out. The landscape all around us – the driest of deserts just seconds before – was now a reddish-brown torrent dotted with white rooster tails sputtering up in the air.

We were now residents of what was fast becoming the smallest island in the Calchaquí Valley, just barely high enough to avoid the flood.

Two hours later, the waters suddenly disappeared, with nothing but a pick-up truck teetering atop a boulder to indicate that anything had ever happened.

Survivor

What makes the soil here in the Calchaquí so dangerous on the one day a year it rains also makes it excellent for grape vines. The bone-dry sand provides excellent drainage for the trickle of snowmelt – purified during a 1,000-foot tumble down the Andean slopes – that stops the grapes from shriveling up entirely.

If they did, we could scarcely blame them.

During the day, the grapes get blasted by intense UV rays (80% more intense than in Bordeaux) that create firm, round tannins (and antioxidants… up to 10 TIMES more than other wines!)…

…while at night, the temperature drops nearly 80 degrees, forcing the grapes to conserve nutrients.

The effect is that the grapes develop thick skins – a nearly black, dark-red color so intense, it turns even stainless steel bright red – and tannins that firmly grip the mouth as hints of plum, blackberry, leather, and smoke drift across the palate…

Were the grapes of a lighter varietal – say, pinot noir or gamay – we’d be in real trouble. But our vines – like most others in these hidden valleys – are of an old malbec variety that disappeared from Europe about 150 years ago.

It’s a survivor – out here, you have to be. Fall off your horse, get caught in a flood or bitten by a snake… and the nearest ambulance is six hours away (assuming you can call one, which you often can’t because there’s no cellphone reception or landline).

Exciting Experiment

For most people, growing grapes out here isn’t worth the trouble.

On the rare occasion you find wines from here in America, they can go for over $500 a bottle!

Which is why I recently came up with a way to get wines from these hidden valleys, like our Tacana Malbec, delivered direct to my doorstep… with no middlemen or inflated prices.

Here’s how it happened: A few years ago, I finally moved back to the U.S. from Argentina. I liked being back. But one thing I missed was the wine culture…

…where old friends dine late into the night, sharing memories and laughter over a great bottle that costs just a few dollars (yet could be a 98-point wine)…

…where the wines themselves are brimming with life and complexity…

Back home in America, I’d go to the supermarket only to find bottle after bottle of dead, flimsy wine… with all the character and richness stripped away by mass-market winemaking tricks that may as well have been developed at Dow Chemical. (And they often left me feeling like I ingested something from Dow Chemical, if you know what I mean.)

And that’s when I had an idea: If I could gather together a few friends and combine our orders – to fill an entire shipping container with wine – I could bring high-altitude wines directly from Argentina to our doorsteps.

So I teamed up with some friends (including two internationally renowned sommeliers)… and created The Bonner Private Wine Partnership.

You might call it a “club,” though it’s really nothing like any other wine club (you know, the kinds that bombard you with bad, bulk wines until you cancel).

Every quarter, we send our members a collection of great – but little-known – wines from a different part of the world.

It was an experiment, but an exciting one. If we could enjoy these hard-to-get wines without paying an arm and a leg, then I’d be happy with it. And so far, our members agree.

(If you’d like to join us, we have a limited number of spots remaining for the latest shipment of wines from Argentina, which includes a bottle of never-before-imported 90 point wine from the reclusive winemaker behind my father’s Tacana – you can click here to learn more…)

Raging Torrent

But I never told you the end of the story I began this two-part series with last weekend…

…and what happened when my pick-up got stuck in the middle of a second torrent some months later… this time, at night…

It’s a strange feeling when your car’s partway underwater and you’re still in it. Especially when it’s pitch black. Well okay, it’s not a strange feeling. It’s panic.

Across the raging torrent – a wide, bone-dry riverbed just an hour before – I could see lights waving. Likely our ranch foreman, Jorge, with a flashlight. He had probably seen my headlights sink beneath the water while waiting for our arrival at the ranch house.

I gunned the engine, hoping for the best.

Then… a miracle. I felt my front wheels catch on something – a log or a boulder?

I managed to get just enough traction to propel the truck forward against the current onto a sandbank. Minutes later, we were on the opposite side of the riverbed. Jorge ran over to us in the dark.

It was the first time I had ever seen his face – typically unperturbable, after 70 years living up here at the edge of civilization – change into something remotely comparable to alarm.

We looked at each other silently for a moment.

Vino? I asked.

Bueno… he replied.

Minutes later, the water was gone.

Regards,

Will Bonner
Founder, Bonner Private Wine Partnership