It’s a long way to Colomé
Ben on Thursday 2 September
Aine from our purchasing team tells of the long and winding Salta road…
It won’t come as any surprise that New World wines have something of an epic journey to reach European shores. However, it is still hard to imagine the epic journey made by our Colomé wines. We started our drive to the Colomé estate, in Northwest Argentina, from Salta, which is the nearest city and is close to the border with both Chile and Bolivia. We drove into the spectacular valleys south of Salta, the winding road clinging to the mountain. Once we reached the top, we passed into the Calchaqui Valley, part of a high plateau in the Andes mountains. Soon we were driving through a vast and empty landscape, the dry dusty land punctuated with giant cacti. When we thought we couldn’t be further away from another human being, there was a small sign on the road indicating some of Colomé’s vineyards. These are the highest vineyards in the world, grown at 3,111m. 
We were still hours from Molinos, the local town, which itself is almost 2 hours drive along a track to the Colomé estate. Apparently we were lucky with the roads as there hadn’t been any recent flash flooding, the main cause of the poor roads. Despite the location, the winery itself is a modern wonder. The vines are planted in perfectly laid rows and cover the lush valley floor. There is evidence everywhere of Colomé’s biodynamic and self-sufficiency practices, drawing on the expertise of the local people. Colomé have expanded a village just outside the estancia where employees and their families live, rearing animals and growing crops, to contribute green fertilizers and compost. High up in the bare mountains behind the vineyard, they also have their own water pump and water supply system making the most of the occasional torrential downpours. Colomé have an interesting selection of wines with both the Torrontes and Malbec grape varieties featuring heavily. French winemaker, Thibault Delmotte, does a fantastic job drawing together the meticulous research done by Colomé and the unquestionable magic in the biodynamic practices to make some fabulous wines. With the vista of the stunning Andes rising steeply behind the vines and cacti, you can sense a little bit of that drama being reflected in the wines themselves. 
We couldn’t really imagine how Colomé transport the wines efficiently out of the valley until we saw it for ourselves. They have built their own road! It cuts through the valley to handle the monster-sized transport trucks that drive the wines to port and reduces the time substantially. Not suitable for our hardy 4WD though due to the risk of flash flooding, but also because if you breakdown, you could be waiting weeks for the next passing truck. Once out of the valley, the wines can make the relatively straight forward, although hardly insignificant, journey across the Atlantic Ocean to our expectant ports.