Canelón Chico – Friday morning and we set off bright and early – we had four winery visits planned for the day, and one of them was planned to include lunch; which here, of course, means sitting and chatting for at least several hours. Our first visit was to Bodegas Carlos Pizzorno in this small village north of Montevideo. I’m not going to spend a lot of time covering this winery, as I’d visited it back in August, and you can read more details about it there.
Things of note since that visit: 1) Ana, who manages the winery and is also a local gastroenterologist, got off to the conference I mentioned in South Africa. Her research was apparently very well received; it was, by the way, specifically about the relationship between wines made from Tannat and colon health, as that was the material she had to work with. We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about it, but I gather it was impressive enough to have some other researchers start looking into more fully funded projects, here and elsewhere. 
2) The winery is doing well enough to have started building a new underground cellar, tasting room, sales office combination. Work on the project is slow, but steady (though at one of our later visits another winery owner half-jokingly referred to it as “Carlos’ 110 square meter swimming pool.”). The plans look impressive, and given that six months ago they hadn’t even broken topsoil, I’d say they’re on track. 3) You can see from the photo above, quite a difference in the grapevines from the previous visit, which was basically winter time here. The tannat grapes are nearly ready for picking, and the Cabernet not far behind them. The Sauvignon blanc has already been picked and is fermenting; here, Carlos’ assistant is dipping us out some samples from the fermentation tank.
On to the tasting notes:
[…] Buenos Aires – Whew! One last posting involving Uruguay for the moment, and then on to a couple of new Chinese restaurants, just for something different. The photo, by the way, was sent to me this morning by Ana Pizzorno, it’s me and Carlos Pizzorno tasting through their wines. I get asked regularly what going to Uruguay is like, are the people different, is the food different, etc. Oftentimes the person asking is a local here, who has just never been across the river. I find that fascinating in and of itself. Coming from a society that’s very mobile, where people are constantly visiting nearby towns, where if you’re near to a border, i.e., Canada or Mexico, crossing it is not something that requires much thought. But I have met folks here who’ve literally never left the city of Buenos Aires in their lives. (Though, I admit, when I went off to grad school in New York City, one of the women in my class, at age 30-something, had never left the island of Manhattan in her life, except once on a school trip as a child to visit the Botanical Garden, and once for her grad school admissions interview in Brooklyn. I remember being stunned by that. When her family vacationed as she was growing up, they did it by checking into a hotel in another neighborhood of Manhattan. Going to school in Brooklyn was exotic in her worldview.) […]
[…] planned, we both said, near simultaneously, that it needed a rich sauvignon blanc, and the Pizzorno “Don Próspero” leapt off the page. Worked perfectly throughout the […]
[…] Select Blend Reserva 2011 – Another winery I’ve visited, twice in fact, and have become friends with the owners. 60% Tannat, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot – […]