Coming from a French family you can only assume Jean Pierre Thibaud grew up surrounded by wine. Indeed his father bought many bottles and stored them in the cellar of his country house on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. One day the butler announced the cellar was flooded and the bottles had lost their labels. For twenty years the family drank the finest wine without knowing exactly what was what.
And that is where Monsieur Thibaud´s interest in wine began and ended. He went on to become an engineer and World Bank executive. He served his time in corporative Argentina and even acted as energy secretary in the late sixties. Wine faded into the background and Thibaud freely admits he drank very little of it and knew less.
That all changed with a phone call in the late eighties. His brother-in-law, the president of Chandon Argentina, had just died and the company was desperate to find a high calibre replacement. Thibaud´s Gallic pedigree and experience of the business world made him an obvious candidate. His lack of wiine knowledge was inconsequential. As he said in his own words:
“Whatever wine you like is good, the rest is jargon.”
So Mr Thibaud learned the jargon and he took the helm of one of Argentina´s biggest and most prestigious wineries. Chandon is the original foreign investor and had been operating since the early sixties. When the president of French Chandon Robert Jean de Vogue visited in 1955, he noted the prodigious amounts of wine imbibed by the locals and their strange habit of adding ice cubes and soda water.
“Mmm” he observed, “this country is ready for champagne!” And so Chandon Argentina was started and by 1997 sales topped a staggering 16.5 million bottles. It became the one of the most profitable arms of the French champagne group and Thibaud helped steer it through what became know as the “pizza and champagne years” – the boom time of the Menem presidency.
When Thibaud finally retired from Chandon in 1998, the wine bug had taken a firm hold of him. Now in his seventies and at an age when he should be surveying golf courses and yacht decks, all he could envision was more steel tanks and oak barrels. With the help of Frenchman Jacques Louis de Montalembert, he decided to start his own winery. They rented space from their French compatriots at Alta Vista and produced two well received varietals, of course a Malbec and a Cabernet-Sauvignon, in 1999. They chose the name Ruca Malen for their new venture - a term from a Mapuche legend meaning “the girl´s house”.
Often with any new wine venture, it´s more important to get the wine on the shelves than an actual winery built. However Thibaud and De Montalembert were compelled by their own success and Alta Vista´s expansion, to break away and invest in bricks and mortar. The thought of buying an old bodega did not appeal as most of Argentina´s older wineries are built from adobe - quaint, good looking but bacteria sponges, and thus require extensive renovation. They decided to buy a green field site and build from nothing. With access and wine tourism in mind, they chose a location straddling the route 7 on the way to Chile. The 27-hectare (67 acres) site in the malbec hotzone of Agrelo had both good grapes and a spectacular view.
And so another French venture began in Mendoza. Thibaud and De Montalembert joined the likes of Michel Rolland and Jacques Lurton in recognising Mendoza as a winemaker´s paradise. As well as having the perfect climate, the French are especially attracted to Mendoza for the freedom it allows them. Here you won´t find the INAO (French wine police) lurking in vineyards, ready to ambush some hapless winemaker as he tries to protect his crop from too severe a drought. Nor does it take a year to gain permission to plant a certain grape in a certain vineyard, as it does in France with its strict appellation laws. Here you can plant whatever you want, wherever you want.
Local input is very important to Bodega Ruca Malen and the winery works very closely with INTA (the National Institute of Agricultural Science). The institute supplied winemakers Silvia Avagnina and Carlos Catania – local specialists who know the best areas and where to source the best grapes. Bodega Ruca Malen uses vines between 8 and 30 years old and source their grapes from several contracted producers who work closely with the winemakers and agronomists throughout the year.
They also work hand in hand with INTA in the area of experimentation. As you walk around the state-of-the-art, orange brick facility, you`ll notice a strange maceration tank designed by the institute. A plunger type contraption protruding from the lid gives it the appearance of a giant coffee maker.
Such a thorough approach has resulted in some spectacular wines, notably excellent Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and an elegant varietal called Kinien. However, Thibaud’s firm grounding in business and knowledge of the commodities markets ensure he has no illusions.
“To make good wine is difficult,” he says, “but to sell it is ten times harder.”
No matter how good a wine might be it still requires a lot of marketing to shift. This is where many Argentine wineries fall down and the industry itself under performs. Bodega Ruca Malen are one of the handful of wineries here who push their product hard. With the help of his son Antoine, Thibaud makes frequent foreign trips to spread the word about Ruca Malen. London is a key market.
“If England says its good, the world takes notice.”
Now the winery is selling heavily in the US. So much so, the winery could not meet a giant order from their importer Zachys of New York. They have had to expand the winery already with a new extension.
Wine tourism is also booming. As well as having well informed and entertaining guides, the bodega offers one of the most spectacular winery lunches in Mendoza. The soon-to-be-famous Lucas Bustos is a talented young chef providing a four-course spectacular. Each meticulous dish is paired to a particular wine and the results have most foodies gushing with superlatives. It´s also one of the few wineries that is not stingy with their wine and guests get to try all the range, including the aforementioned Kinien. The fact that you eat in the winery and not in a separate visitors centre gives the experience an appealing intimacy. People usually leave laden with bottles or at least with a slip of paper that gives all visitors a 20% discount on all Ruca Malen purchases in the US. Now that’s marketing!
