Christine Folch

Argentine winemaker Trivento hosted a five wine flight at MaQuiaVeLo, a wine bar in Asunción. The Mendoza wines ranged from bubbly to reds and all are definitely worth a try.

Wine 1: Trivento Brut Nature
McIntosh apples on the nose (i.e. the way it smelled). Taste of pear and mature apples, but not fruity. I like my sparkling wine rather dry and have in general been disappointed by what I've had that's made down here. I think the use of Pinot Noir in this (in addition to the Chardonnay that goes into sparkling wine) makes a pleasant difference. One of my two favorites from the night.

Wine 2: Trivento Tribu Chardonnay 2008
Fruit on the nose (lychee in syrup) and with breathing it opens up really nicely. The taste was lots of fruit and surprisingly minerally; it didn't linger long. Chardonnay isn't my favorite white wine grape, but I liked this.

Wine 3: Trivento Tribu Malbec 2008
Duck tallow on the nose (not a bad thing!) and something a bit smokey like molasses. The taste was not aggressive and a fine enough Malbec to be an acceptable enough wine to be an introduction to the grape. But it tasted young and unremarkable.

Wine 4: Trivento Reserve Malbec 2007
Peppery, acidy, spicy on the nose. A well-rounded, mature wine with a little bit of acid and wood-- a robust Malbec. This was my other favorite from the night.

Wine 5: Trivento Dulce Natural Malbec
This is a sweet red wine served cold. The nose was copper (blood! again, not a bad thing) and pomegranate. The taste? Pure pomegranate. People in the room compared it to sangría (fittingly, I suppose)-- I liked it and would definitely bring it to parties.


Incidentally, I liked that the two representatives from Trivento (who I got to chatting with after the tour and who welcome all to visit the vineyard in Mendoza) took their time walking the crowd of people through how to "taste" wine and how they insisted that the best wine is the one you want to return to. I have a strongly held aversion to the elite snobbery that too frequently goes along with drinking wine. This is the stuff peasants have been making in their farm houses for milennia--common and comfort food, not the exclusive scary thing it has become thanks to jargon--a sentiment my good friend Robin Goldstein (who is committed to demystifying and unmasking a lot of the, er, mystification that swirls around wine-drinking) has written about in his book, The Wine Trials.