Brand story
Cheval des Andes 2016
Cheval des Andes was born in 1999 from the meeting of two wine cultures, when Château Cheval Blanc formed a joint venture with Terrazas de los Andes in Mendoza. The idea belonged to Pierre Lurton, who set out to follow Malbec back to its origins: the variety was widely planted in Bordeaux before being carried to Argentina in the mid-1800s, just ahead of phylloxera, and the vines that survive there remain ungrafted. Finding the old Malbec of Las Compuertas, planted in 1929, he called it a journey to the roots of Bordeaux. The estate today farms 50 hectares of its own high-altitude vineyards — Las Compuertas in Luján de Cuyo at 1,070 metres and La Consulta in the Uco Valley at 1,100 metres — and is known as the “Grand Cru” of the Andes.
The 2016 was an atypical year in Mendoza, shaped by El Niño: heavy rain from October to December and a cool, wet spring that delayed the cycle by twenty days, followed by a notably hot, dry January and February. Yields fell to 35 hl/ha, but the berries came in small, rich and concentrated, harvested between 23 March and 25 April entirely from the top terroirs of Las Compuertas and La Consulta. Blended 58% Malbec, 37% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Petit Verdot, fermented in small stainless-steel vats and aged fourteen months in Central French oak, the wine is deep red with purple hints, aromatically intense with cherry, wild strawberry and spice, and balanced on the palate — supple and fresh in attack, with soft, precise tannins and an elegant finish. Argentine exuberance held in Bordeaux's frame, made to travel through the decades.
