From Canada to Argentina

What do you do for a change of scenery if you’re devoting your careers to improving the quality of wine in three Canadian provinces? Start working in a fourth province or open a winery in Argentina? If you’re Ann Sperling and Peter Gamble, the answer’s obvious. You launch a winery in Argentina.

Widely thought of as Canada’s “winemaking power couple,” Sperling and Gamble are both winemakers and viticulturists, and during the last three decades they’ve consulted and made wine in British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. Ann Sperling made wine at her family’s Sperling Vineyards in Okanagan Valley and at the Malivoire Wine Company and Southbrook Vineyards in Niagara Peninsula, and she has consulted for many other wineries.

Peter Gamble has not only consulted for many wineries, but he was also the lead consultant in the founding of such wineries as Ravine Vineyard Estate Winery and Stratus Vineyards in Niagara Peninsula and Benjamin Bridge, Nova Scotia’s foremost producer of sparkling wine. He was also the first executive director of VQA Ontario. Both Sperling and Gamble have racked up awards for their work.

In 2006, while still fully engaged in their Canadian ventures, they decided to launch a winery in Argentina’s sprawling Mendoza wine region. “It’s a beautiful country with wonderful people and a sophisticated winegrowing culture,” Ann Sperling says.

___

“Mendoza is an excellent place to make wine, and it’s one of the very few places in the world to grow fine malbec. There are excellent plantings of old vines that do not and will never exist in Canada, so it was an opportunity to do something very different from what we do at home.”

 

You might think that there was enough malbec from Argentina, but making wine from the variety was part of the draw, because Sperling sees it as a special grape. “Like pinot noir,” she says, “malbec is a tabula rasa for terroir, with each site having distinct traits.” The fact that Argentina is in the Southern Hemisphere was also important. The growing season there takes place in different months from the Northern Hemisphere, enabling Sperling and Gamble to do two harvests each year.

Ann Sperling and Peter Gamble

In 2006, assisted by three Argentine viticulturists, they started looking at more than 200 vineyards before settling on a three-hectare property in the foothills of the Andes. Planted with malbec vines in 1920, it had been neglected, but the couple rehabilitated it and produced their first vintage in 2009. The vineyard was certified organic in 2015, reflecting Sperling’s longtime commitment to organic and biodynamic viticulture.

They named the wines Versado—meaning “well-versed,” in the sense of expert or accomplished. The name reflects their sense of having learned the characteristics of Mendoza’s vineyards. They were attracted to the word it when an Argentine member of their vineyard team commented that the vines were versado: “that they had produced great wines for nearly a century and, being asked to do so again, they knew exactly what to do. They were well-versed in this matter.”

Becoming versed in making wine in Argentina did not mean conforming to the prevailing styles. When they established Versado, Sperling notes, the malbec wines that were getting rewarded with high scores had “chocolate-cherry, mocha, roasty profiles with thick midpalate and highish alcohol.” She says that selling wines in international markets meant producers were making an international style rather than expressing their individual sites.

“Even in 2009,” Sperling says, “we were rebelling against heavy wines that were dominated by new oak. Over the years, we’ve found that we prefer ‘just-ripe’ fruit with structure from both acidity and tannins, accompanied by some savoury notes for complexity and longevity.” Their favourite drinking window is six to 10 years for their basic malbec and old vine bottlings but 10 to 25 years for Reservas that develop much more slowly. “We know that not everyone wants to age wines this long, and that Versado is delicious young, but we get a lot of satisfaction from later drinking.”

There’s nothing heavy and oaky about Versado malbecs. If there’s a common line through them, from younger wines to those more than a decade old, it’s the freshness of the fruit and the vibrancy of the finely calibrated acid. They have the 14-15 per cent alcohol common to malbecs from Argentina, but there’s no hint of it in the aromas or flavours any more than the oak shows through. Across the board, these are elegant, delicious wines that invite you to pour more than a glass. Gamble and Sperling travel to Argentina about twice a year, especially in the March-April period, when they decide on the harvest date, mark off the parcels to be used for the different tiers of wines, oversee the picking, and make the wine and see it into barrels. They do 10 per cent whole clusters and rely on wild fermentation. Barrel-maturation is important, with Old Vine and Centenary Vines wines bottled after about 12 months in barrel, and Reserva and special Reserve having double that time in barrel.

Making malbec wine in Argentina has a sort of “taking coals to Newcastle” ring to it. But Ann Sperling and Peter Gamble have quickly carved out a niche in Mendoza. Their low-yielding old vines and their attention to detail in the vineyard and cellar are producing distinctive wines that are well worth seeking out.

Versado wines

Versado Ancient Malbec Reserva Malbec 2013

Versado Centenary Vines Malbec 2019

Versado Malbec 2018

Versado Old Vine Malbec 2019

Photographs by Steven Elphick.

SHARE