Apartado Gran Malbec 2016

The Apartado Gran Malbec adds another recognition and projects itself as a wine that will give experts something to talk about for many years. On this occasion it has been selected among the 100 Best Wines in the World by Wine Enthusiast magazine. Rutini Wines’ malbec occupies the 78th place on the list.

The critic Michael Schachner, responsible for South America of this prestigious publication, assigned this malbec 94 points and attributed a potential as wine for laying down until 2035. These were his words: “Considering that the 2015 harvest was difficult, especially for high-expression red wines like this one, Apartado is an unstoppable success. It is round, ripe and complex on the nose, with exotic aromas of cardamom, blueberry and rubber. On the palate it is intense, crispy and bright. It has flavors of blackberry and mixed spices that impact drop by drop towards the end. It will be drinkable for many years. Lay down until 2035.” Schachner strongly recommended his followers to “buy now.”

In 2018, the Apartado Gran Malbec was the wine chosen for the gala dinner served in the Golden Hall of the Teatro Colón for the leaders of the G20. It was also present at the launch of the book “Exploring the extraordinary: 100 years of Bentley Motors”, at the Detroit Marriott Troy, MI held by the most prestigious car clubs in the world: the Rolls-Royce Owners Club (RROC) and the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts Club (RREC). This malbec, prepared by Mariano Di Paola and his team, has obtained excellent qualifications: Guía Descorchados (97 points), James Suckling (96), Wine Enthusiast and Decanter (94), Wine Advocate-Robert Parker (93) and Tim Atkin ( 93).

In a dialogue with El Descorche Diario, Mariano Di Paola highlighted the evolution of the Gran Malbec and commented on the conditions of its elaboration:

“It’s a harvest that, as Michael points out, was a bit complicated. But the good thing was it didn’t have much alcohol and the skins and the tannins of the clusters matured very well. That is why the wine has a very good acidity and a lot of concentration which allows us to think that it is a long-standing wine”.

Then he noted that, although it was a year “with little grape yield, it was not so hot and the phenolic maturity had to wait a little for the maturity of the sugars, that gave us good acidity and a complete maturation of tannins, coloring matter and all polyphenols. That’s the big secret of the Apartado Gran Malbec.”

History

From the start, Felipe Rutini was guided by the motto “Labor and perseverance.” This attitude shaped the development of his wines, which became synonymous with superlative quality. Following his innovative spirit, in 1925 the winery began to plant vines in the Uco Valley. From those first pioneering vines, the region has continued to expand its plantings and become one of the primary wine-producing areas in Mendoza. In the 1990s, the original Bodega La Rural facilities in Coquimbito were completely renovated, incorporating cutting-edge technology into the nineteenth-century structure. Today that property houses the Bodega La Rural Wine Museum, where visitors can learn about Felipe Rutini’s first forays into wine production and witness the evolution of traditional techniques and machinery. 

In keeping with its founder’s drive for excellence, in 2008 construction began on a new Rutini Wines facility in Tupungato, within the Uco Valley. It is there that our top level wines, such as Felipe Rutini, Apartado, Antología, Single Vineyard , Colección Rutini, Encuentro, and Trumpeter wines are currently produced. Our Uco Valley vineyards comprise more than 400 hectares at an altitude of between 1,050 and 1,200 meters above sea level. An additional 120 hectares of fields that are currently being planted with vines will expand the winery’s possibilities for producing unique wines that are carefully tended to and nurtured from the very beginning.

Vinification

Rutini Wines’ new winery is part of a project that will be carried out in a number of phases. Seventy percent of the construction is already complete: production facilities, the grape receiving area, presses, stainless-steel tanks, and new traditional-style concrete vats. The winery currently produces 4 million liters of the 6 million Rutini expects to achieve. State-of- the-art technology enhances and complements the eager pursuit of excellence exhibited by our enologist and his team. 

Cube-shaped concrete vats have been installed that will allow for increased extraction of polyphenols. Each one has a capacity of 15,000 liters. Rutini also has tapered fermentation tanks specially designed to efficiently separate the crushed skins from the thin layer of liquid that surrounds the pulp, intensifying the wine’s hue, flavor, and bouquet. There are currently 2,000 oak barrels in use, and they expect to expand that number to 5,000. Once the construction has been completed, the winery is also expected to produce 500,000 liters of sparkling wine per year.

Technology

Rutini Wines currently has two sorting lines. The first, which is optical, consists of a conveyor belt that carries the destemmed grapes under the lens of a camera, which takes a photo of them. The image is analyzed using a computer program that determines which grapes should be discarded and which should not based on three parameters: shape, color, and size. Once the decision has been made, the program sends the instruction to 150 solenoid valves located at the end of the belt to separate the defective grapes using pressurized air. 

Thanks to this technology, we have achieved excellent homogeneity in our grape selection, since we are able to separate damaged, dried-out, and moldy grapes as well as plant debris (leaves and stems). It is used for our Rutini, Single Vineyard, Antología, Apartado, and Felipe Rutini wines. The second sorting line is oscillatory. It consists of two cylindrical drums that spin at high speed and ensure precise and efficient sorting.

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