"Foreign Winery invests in Mendoza". It's a news title that hardly warrants reading as this region has been on every well-coined winemaker´s radar for the past thirty years and foreign investment in the region has been huge in contrast to the rest of the country. However, whilst the Chileans, French and Brazilians all lined up to buy vineyards in Mendoza, I couldn´t help notice that the traffic was all one way and that Mendoza´s wineries had zero interest in investing abroad.
Perhaps as a sign of change and that the industry is maturing and evolving, we now have one Argentine bodeguero taking a leap of faith and exporting his expertise not in a bottle but in hard cash. Carlos Pulenta has made a multi million dollar deal to acquire Renwood in the Sierra foothills of California.
This could prove a savvy move as the current Argentine wine boom will not be eternal. One morning we will all wake up and realize we have planted too many new vineyards and the fashion for Malbec has passed. Renwood happens to specialize in another grape with a cult like following – Zinfandel and it is located in the only wine making country in the world that cannot produce enough wine for its domestic market.
