| Early in the 20th century the plains around San Rafael, a town in the south of Mendoza, were dry and farming yielded little. That's when a group of settlers, members of a family originally from the province of Navarra, Spain, came to these lands to found around one of the most important wineries in Argentina, Arizu Bodegas S.A. Don Jacinto Arizu and his brothers found in Villa Atuel the best quality land and water necessary to develop their goals. Steam tractors were brought in to build a system of irrigation canals - this is to preserve this link to history that the best wines are now bottled under the El Tractor label. The Arizu brothers planted the single largest plot of vineyard in the world, 3,800 hectares, and built a sixty million litre winery, now declared a Historical Monument by the Government of the Province of Mendoza. In 1996, the Pueyo Echevarría Family, also Spaniards from Aragon and Vasconia, acquired the property and began the development of a new project for the production of grapes and olives for high quality wine and oil production. The winery was built with the most modern infrastructure, achieving an excellent combination that optimizes the resources needed in wine making. From the first to the last stage of production, workmanship and technology are present taking care of every detail in the wine making procedures. The management’s philosophy is to optimize the extraordinary quality of the lands by applying the latest agricultural technology in order to maximize the potential of the estates. Currently Villa Atuel S.A. has a surface of 371 hectares of vineyards trained with vine arbor and trellis (espalier) systems, distributed in 3 estates, San Francisco, Norte and El Nevado. The cultivars that make up the vineyards are reproduced asexually on ungrafted rootstocks in the greenhouses and the propagation material is chosen by clonal selection in vineyards in the province of Mendoza. The estates are irrigated with water from the Atuel River which comes from snow and glaciers melting in the Andes and is distributed by an extensive network of canals to different storage dams. The estate has eight water storage units with capacities ranging from 30 to 60 thousand cubic meters. From these reservoirs the water is pressurized into a drip irrigation system to which are added the nutrients that vines need. The soils are of alluvial origin, deep and slightly alkaline. They have a broad textural classification, ranging from clay to sandy but most of them are loam soils, fertile and with good organic matter content. |
| Villa Atuel Website |
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| Malbec |
| 100% Malbec. A deep-red wine with spices, plums and peaches on the nose and a long finish. A complex, but structured wine with great balance. 14% alcohol. 5000 cases produced. |
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| Cabernet Sauvignon |
| 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. This dark-red, complex wine boasts green pepper, butter and caramel notes and has a rounded finish. 14% alcohol. 5000 cases produced. |
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