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Dominio del Plata

The Dominio del Plata winery, constructed in 2001, is the project of husband-and-wife team Pedro Marchevsky and Susana Balbo.Marchevsky had been Catena's vineyard manager for many years, and Balbo, who married Marchevsky in 1996, served as Catena's export manager and oversaw the construction of the new Catena Zapata winery before she made the decision to go off on her own.Marchevsky joined her a year later.The wines at Dominio del Plata are vinified in stainless steel tanks, some of which have inner wood staves.Only the rose and torrontes bottlings are filtered; all wines are fined.Marchevsky and Balbo own 76 hectares of vines and buy fruit from seven growers spread around Mendoza-"to limit the risk of hail and to be able to make more complex malbec," notes Marchevsky.Marchevsky is among the most experienced and sophisticated viticulturists of Mendoza, making use of a variety of steps to ensure greater hang time of the fruit and more even ripening.He believes in a certain minimum ratio of canopy to fruit ("1.2 square meters of leaves for 1 kilogram of grapes"), decreases the availability of water to prevent the growth of secondary shoots, and pulls leaves only on the morning side, believing that the fruit needs protection against the "dangerous" afternoon sun.While his vine rows run north-south, they are skewed about 21 degrees to the west to take advantage of morning sun and avoid the stronger afternoon sun.Marchevsky also likes the cathedral-style netting system he has adopted to protect his vines against hail, because it has the effect of drawing out the growing season."It's a good idea here to delay the uptake of sugar in the grapes and allow the fruit to hang to develop flavors and color," he explained."In Mendoza there are a lot of problems with underripe/overripe flavors."Incidentally, none of the wines I tasted at Dominio del Plata is freakishly high in alcohol:all are between 13% and 14.2%.As a gross generalization, Marchevsky's BenMarco wines emphasize pure, intense primary fruits and offer considerable early appeal, while Balbo's top wines under the Susana Balbo label are drier, more austere, more obviously structured and less user-friendly at the outset.Marchevsky does a cold maceration and a cooler fermentation, while Balbo allows the fermentation to begin quickly, ferments at higher temperature and does more post-fermentation maceration.Both sets of wines have done consistently well in my tastings in recent years.This is a very solid source of high-quality wine from Argentina.

From Focus on Argentina (Nov 2005) by Stephen Tanzer

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2003 Benmarco Dominio Del Plata Malbec Mendoza

Release Price: $15

Color: Red

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Dominio del Plata

2003 Benmarco Dominio Del Plata Malbec Mendoza

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