Monday, December 12, 2011

I wanna hold your hand

We were invited to the launch party to celebrate the release of Marina Frederking's album, VERME.
It was a fantastic meeting of beautiful people, good food and open bar that lasted well into the wee hours.
Marina is an extremely talented and sexy artist, and in this album she is showing that a cover version is much, much more than a new performance of a popular song. She is indeed showing her true colors in all 10 tracks, really touching our souls with her warm voice. Our pick? "I wanna hold your hand"...

You can get an idea of how exciting the performance was clicking on this link
http://soundcloud.com/marinafrederking/sets/verme/


Marina Frederking
VERME

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Patagonia, land of dreams







Everything started with a glass of red wine. Piero Incisa della Rocchetta (of the italian family behind Sassicaia, the great Super Tuscan wine) tasted in New York a fantastic Pinot Noir from a vineyard in Patagonia and he fell in love. It was a bottle of Humberto Canale by the danish winemaker Hans Vinding-Diers. Amazed by the quality of wines Hans was being able to make, he decided to start his own winery.

After a long and difficult search, he found a nearly abandoned vineyard in the Province of Rio Negro, with Pinot Noir vines that were over 70 years old (something unusual, because Argentina is land of Malbec). The funny thing is, the vineyard's owner initially refused to sell Piero the land. He told him that any commercial venture would fail. Piero respectfully ignored the prediction of bankruptcy and made a full commitment to follow his dream by buying the vineyard. Bodega Chacra was born.

The small vineyard from 1932 is the foundation for the winery. There are also parcels planted in 1955 and 1967, and another one with new plantings. Harvested manually, the vines are fermented naturally in large round cement vats with the minimum of intervention before being put into the oak barrels. Fermentation takes place naturally in the following six months, and the wines are then left undisturbed before being bottled without any filtration.

The results? Three of the most extraordinary and unique wines in Argentina: Chacra 32, Chacra 55 and Barda. They are easily the best Pinot Noir outside of Burgundy.
Andree Putman once said : "To not dare is to have already lost. We should seek out ambitious, even unrealistic projects…because things only happen when we dream".

We couldn't agree more.