MALBEC VIEJOS VIÑEDOS EN PIE FRANCO 2017

These old Malbec vines were planted during the first decades of the XX Century. They were planted ungrafted on clayey, stony and limestones soils and they are located in Mendoza’s most traditional sites: the gapes coming from Las Compuertas, and Vistalba. Clusters are destemmed and they go down, in a natural way by gravity to small concrete vats. They with wild yeast at a temperature between 26º to 28ºC during several weeks. Aging continues in French oak barrels for more than a year. 

Matias Riccitelli's Winery History

Matias Riccitelli was born in Cafayate, Salta, a little village in the north of Argentina, a place where you can actually breathe wine. He moved to mendoza with his family, where he studied winemaking, few years later Matias became as a winemaker for one of the most prestigious wineries in Argentina. A traveler and a tireless dreamer, after taking part of countless harvests all over the wine world, where he gathered lots of anecdotes, he eventually decided to join these experiences with Jorge Riccitelli’s teachings (his father and mentor) and he established Riccitelli Wines in 2009.

The winery is located in Las Compuertas (1100 meters above sea level). It is the highest area of Lujan de Cuyo, where we have 20 hectares of ungrafted old vineyards. We also work with minor growers that own their lands at the bottom of the Andes halfway between 1000 and 1700 masl such as Gualtallary, Chacayes, Altamira and La Carrera.

In 2015 we started a new project. We revalued old vineyards Semillon, Merlot and Malbec from the argentinian Patagonia. They come from vineyards that were planted by the end of the sixties and that are located in Rio Negro high valley.

Our harvests are handmade, in this way we keep the integrity of each cluster of grapes. After this they are dropped into little concrete vats. What we want from our vineyards is to secure the best expression of our terroir keeping the highest purity and delicacy in winemaking and also in aging, taking care about their singularity in order to obtain vibrant wines. These great diversity of soils highly influenced by height, shows Argentinian great potential in winemaking and that is what we want to express with our wines.

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