One of the great perks of working in the wine business, as buyer for a retail store, is the many invitations to meet winemakers and taste their wines.  This often happens during large trade events.  I've often taken the opportunity to interview winemakers for the Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman podcast.  This interview with the winemaker of Eral Bravo - Matias Sanchez-Nieto - was shot in Summer 2009 and became my third podcast episode in 2010.  Enjoy!

Transcript:

Okay. My name is Matias Sanchez-Nieto. I am from Eral Bravo Winery. We are placed in Mendoza Province in Argentina, in the western part of Argentina, which is very close to Chile. Actually, we are in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. Our vineyards are about close to 3,500 feet high, so that let's us produce wines with some complexity, very interesting complexity, very nice colors, very nice possibilities of aging the wines and very elegant.

My family has been in the wine business for more than 30 years. We used to have one of the most important wineries in Argentina. We sold it just a few years ago to a very important group. Now, because we've always been related to this, we decided to develop this new product, Eral Bravo product. We have just three years selling our wines, but we are in about 50 markets, in different countries, I mean. Here in the States, we are covering, in the short period, we are in about 12 states. Some of them, like Ohio, we've been working for one year and a half, which was a surprise for us because the results have been really, really good.

We have the highest average altitude in Mendoza, actually in Argentina as well, I think it should be the highest in the world because we have ... As I said, our vineyards are very high, but even in south and the very north, our vineyard's much, much higher at about 2,000 meters or some more, which is about 6 or 7,000 feet high. They are really extreme ... Those vineyard extreme compared to other locations.

We produce different ranges. In our winery, we have the Urano range. We are offering a rose, Malbec, Syrah, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Soon we'll have some white wine, either Viognier or Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, which are grapes that we produce ourselves. Then we have the Erales range, which is a little higher in terms of segmentation and pricing. Here, we have a Malbec and a Cabernet Sauvignon. I brought this Erales we have the YBS. We call it the YBS because it's our year's barrel selection. Every year we select barrels and we choose the barrels that we think have the best potential to be more time, to keep more the ones inside so then we decide the best way according to our opinion to offer something very, very special. It's been a very successful wine. Allocations are very ... You know, it's tough for us to allocate in different markets, but it's very, very good for our image and very good to make understand that Argentina has all the capabilities to show great wines.

There are many wineries that are working very well and I think the American consumers are realizing about these that we can offer great quality at fair prices, not overpriced wines. That's an advantage that we have and the results are on the way because we are growing, Argentina I mean is growing a lot in the American market. Currently it's the most important market and it's going to be ... It is continue growing, for sure. Everybody's looking for United States.

It's worth it to try our wines because they offer nice fruit, very good colors, you can see here what deep colors. We have very clean wines, very balanced wines in all senses, in fruit, without treatment, but also nice acidity, smooth wines, structured but smooth wines, very round tannins. We try to get complexity in our wines and we want them to be elegant, so I think we have accomplished that and we invite you all to try them.