In my ongoing pursuit of improving my knowledge of wine (slowly but surely…), I recently attended the Argentine Wine Fair held at Gaucho, located within the state-of-the-art O2 arena in Greenwich. It has been a while since my last visit to Gaucho, an Argentine restaurant which specializes in beef, exclusively sourced from Argentina. They only use grass-fed free-to-roam Aberdeen Angus-bred beef which comes from 45 hand-picked farms (estancias), all of which use traditional rearing methods.
I’ve always known Gaucho for their speciality and focus on quality beef, but was never quite aware of the wine aspect, where the Gaucho passion for the best of Argentina seems to have embraced the country’s wine production, particularly over the last 15 years.
This one-off afternoon wine-tasing event was hosted by Gaucho’s Director of Wines, Phil Crozier, otherwise nicknamed ‘Mr Argentina’.
Well-known as a true pioneer of Argentine wines in the UK, Phil was the first ever buyer to produce an all Argentine wine list outside of Argentina – forging extremely close relationships with many of the famous wine-makers in Argentina in this time, and has worked closely with young wine makers, embarking on a journey to produce wines with them in 2002. He has built a wine list with over 200 top quality Argentine wines over the years, working with top vineyards from Salta in the north to Patagonia in the south.
The afternoon involved a showcase of what has been his labour of love over the past five years, where we were presented with a selection of Gaucho’s new and diverse wines that are not available anywhere else in the world.
There were about 8 different stations featuring wines from the regions across Argentina, and we also got to sample some of Gaucho’s famous empanadas and ceviche.
The Torrontés was probably the one that I most favoured amongst the ones that I tried, a typically Argentine grape that is mostly found in the provinces of La Rioja, San Juan, and Salta.
Their wholly-exclusive, fully-Argentinian wine list that is set to launch in October – do check out their website for information on more of their exciting up-coming events.
The Cheekster, signing out x
