Las Estelas Pinot Noir 2021, Finca Mangato

Tupungato, Uco Valley, Mendoza, Argentina

Wow! A gorgeous soft raspberry nose, beautiful colour and a soft an elegant palate of supple red berry fruits, a complex and weighty palate and wonderfully long length. Extraordinary.

Made in partnership with Diego Rosso, whose Pinot vines in Tunuyan are amongst the oldest in the Uco, this is clone 777 planted in the 1990s and made with the utmost respect for this most fickle of grapes. Everything is done by hand, with fermentation in a combination of concrete eggs and old barrels, fully de-stemmed with partial whole bunch. 100% of the wine is aged for 10 months in second use French oak. On the nose, bounteous wild red fruits and the unmistakable whiff of forest floor; in the mouth silky tannins and fresh juicy fruit with a long finish. This is definitely New World Pinot Noir approaching its South American best and sees Argentina taking a seat at the top table. It bodes for amazing things to follow in future.

'Las Estelas' is the pet project of Estela Perinetti, one of the first of South America’s rapidly growing family of women winemakers. She spent more than two decades heading up some of Catena’s most high-profile winery projects and she has been very much in demand as one of Mendoza’s leading consultants since. 

The story begins in the early 1940s when Estela’s grandfather, Dr. Hector Perinetti, son of an immigrant from Piedmont, purchased a piece of land in Tupungato and planted Semillon. (At that time this area was considered too cold for red grapes!) When aged just two years old his eldest son, Hector Junior, named the vineyard – Finca Mangato.

As these vines became old and increasingly non-viable in the 1990s, Estela and her mother – Estela Armando, also a winemaker – decided to grub up the Semillon to plant red varietals such as Malbec, the Cabernets Sauvignon and Franc, and Merlot and Syrah, and these vines form the basis of Las Estelas today.