Description
This wine comes from younger vines on the Zorzal estate. It does not lack for ripeness, showing strawberry and blackberry fruit, with spice. Beneath that there is a lot of earthy, undergrowth and savoury characters. The palate has excellent richness and is full of flavour. The wine will evolve and become more savoury over 3-7 years. It will match with stir fry beef.
Zorzal Terroir Unico Pinot Noir Wine Review
Wine Enthusiast
89 Points
“Kale and other green-leaf aromas suggest green tobacco and grass, while this feels light to medium in weight, with rubbing tannins. Cherry, spice and herbal flavors finish with tension on a racy, lighter-style finish. At 12.5%, this is about as light as PN gets while still offering enough fruit.”
Zorzal came to life in 2008 as a partnership between Canadian and Argentine families. The Zorzal home site is one of the highest in Mendoza, and the terroir allows them to make aromatic, elegant and fine-boned wines which are pretty and refreshing.
Mendoza
Without question the jewel in the crown of Argentina. A large region. Lots of young and innovative producers have moved in and are slowly mapping out sub-regions and single vineyards of note. Look out for great Malbec, but lots of experimentation means you can find all sorts of beautiful wines.
Pinot Noir
Pinot Noir is the most elusive grape. It is relatively early ripening and extremely sensitive to terroir. Its perfect place on earth is the Cote d’Or in Burgundy. So haunting are great red Burgundy’s charms that growers everywhere try to emulate them. Pinot Noir is not just a one-trick pony. Apart from the best reds in the world, you can find world-class Pinot Noir rosé, sparkling. You can even find sweet wines, whites on occasion and I’ve tasted a decent fortified Pinot Noir too.
Argentina
A country that has been growing vines since the 1500s but only really focussing on quality since the 1980s. It’s a shame because Argentina is close to the perfect place to grow grapes on the planet.
The Andes mountain range is to blame. The average elevation for vineyards in Argentina is about 900m, meaning they have the highest vineyards in the world. The height provides warm days and cold nights that lead to a long and slow ripening period that retains beautiful acidity in the wines. The dry and cold air from the snow-capped mountains alleviates any disease pressure, and the snow melts provide plentiful irrigation resources for a country that doesn’t see much rainfall. The grapes tend to get a lot of exposure to UV from the sun, which means they naturally develop thicker skins which lead to more tannin and flavour compounds.
The other strength of Argentina is the vine stock. Having had vines in the ground for a long, long time, they have managed to work out what grows well where and the vines have even started to evolve to suit the climate. Being able to access such material for planting new vineyards is a priceless resource.
The bountiful water and lack of disease mean that harvesting grapes happens when they are fully ripe and in pristine condition. The old winemaking saying goes “you can’t make great wine out of poor grapes.” That, combined with flavour-packed grapes and some modern know-how means you get quite a good deal when buying quality wine from Argentina.
Wine
Wine is the result you get from fermented grape juice. There is proof of wine production dating back 8000 years ago. Fashions, innovations and many other factors have influenced the way wine has evolved over the years.
The wine grape is impressive. It contains everything you need to make grape wine except for the yeast, which lives on the outside of the skins.
Human inputs can influence the final product, including the viticulture (growing) choices. And the winemaker can shape the wine to a point too.
The best wines of the world often refer to terroir. Terroir is a French term that refers to all the climatic, geological and topographical influences on a specific piece of land. And it is true that neighbouring vineyards, grown identically, can taste noticeably different.
Red Wine
Fun fact; most of the colour for wines comes from the skins. There are only a handful of grapes that have red juice. Alicante is the most well known of these grapes.
By macerating the juice on the skins, the wine gains tannins, and flavours. Certain compounds change the chemistry of the wine too.
Red wines tend to have higher alcohol. More tannin and more oak flavours compared to other styles of wine. But the thousands of grapes and terroirs they grow in influence this.
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