Age matters
The grapes for Más de Cien come from our Perdriel vineyard with over 100-year-old vines. These deep-rooted vines have naturally reduced yields, giving our wines more concentration and complexity, leading to a pure expression of their terroir. But this constant quest to deliver the highest quality is not the only reason we are working with old vines.
Year-Old Plantings
Our ungrafted vines were planted in the 1920s.
Ungrafted Vines Remain Worldwide
Only 1% of ungrafted rootstock – the purest expression of Malbec – remains in the world due to phylloxera, and ours are among them.
Above Sea Level
Our Más de Cien vineyard sits at an elevation between 990 and 995 meters.
Preserving Viticultural Heritage
When we purchased our Perdriel vineyard, it had gone through years of poor viticultural management. The vines were looking wild and neglected. Nevertheless, they were still among the lucky ones. Over the last decades, many hectares of vineyards have been pulled out and sacrificed for real estate development or because it was commercially convenient to plant younger vines.
We made it our mission to preserve this viticultural heritage. In a world where things get thrown away, we want to preserve that heritage for the next generations, so that our plants can grow grapes for the next 100 years. When you drink a glass of our wine, it is more than an alcoholic beverage. It is a piece of Argentina’s heritage, and it is a story that has many more chapters to come.
Ungrafted Vines
What distinguishes our vines is their exclusive reliance on entirely European genetics. Resonating with the traditional cultivation methods in Europe before the devastating phylloxera epidemic of the mid-19th century, each vine at CICLO ANDINO grows “ungrafted,” firmly rooted in its own soil. Unlike the prevailing practice of grafting onto phylloxera-resistant rootstocks from native North American grapevines, embraced by over 99% of the global vineyards today, our ancient Malbec vines express the unadulterated character of this classic grape variety.
Massal Selection
Our Perdriel Malbec vineyard was planted through Massal Selection. This means selecting and propagating vines from a diverse population of seedlings rather than relying on clones. This approach offers several advantages compared to using clones. Massal Selection promotes genetic diversity, enhancing the vineyard’s resilience to pests, diseases, and changing environmental conditions. Additionally, Massal Selection helps avoid the potential pitfalls of genetic uniformity associated with cloning, fostering a more sustainable and dynamic vineyard ecosystem over time.
Take an example from the world of football: A team of eleven Messi’s will not win the World Cup, but a team with Messi, a good goalkeeper, solid defence and a well-functioning midfield will do.
