Most supermarkets and even most restaurants here in Buenos Aires carry the exact same wines. After four years of living here, I’m totally burnt out on Trapiche and Norton and even the pricier ones like Luigi Bosca and Ruttini.
Plus, John and I do a lot of cooking at home. We tend to cook things we can’t find easily in Buenos Aires like Mexican food, Asian dishes, Indian cuisine, and, of course, Cajun food. Spicy stuff most of it, and Argentines are notorious for not liking spicy (they think black pepper is too hot).
We wanted to find a great wine to pair with the types of foods we love. We also wanted to taste it first. We would have to go to several places (and parts of town) to get the ingredients for our spicy shrimp Thai curry and then spend hours making the dish, so we wanted the wine to be the right one.
So we went to our second wine tasting at Anuva Wines (affiliate link) because we were so impressed the first time (we blogged about it here). Anuva Wines only deals with boutique wineries and Daniel, the owner of Anuva pictured above, knows his stuff (see Anuva Wine’s Knowledgebase for tons of information on Argentinean wines). We came home with a bottle of Amadores Pinot Noir (not a very common varietal here in Argentina, the land of Malbec).
Wine Tasting at Anuva Wines
You’ll hear Daniel in our video below call this Pinot Noir a “dirty, dirty wine.” It does have an earthiness to it. He told us it would pair well with mushroom dishes (the more obvious choice) and spicy food. One taste and we knew we’d found a wine we’ll have again and again.
The pairing was perfect and we wouldn’t have gotten this suggestion from other wine tastings here in Buenos Aires. We’ve gone to a few tastings in wine shops here in San Telmo. But since they’re run by Argentines and since Argentines don’t really like spicy food, you can’t ask for suggestions on unique wine pairings. Every Malbec goes well with red meat. Pinot Noirs are great with cheese. But what to do when you feel like eating Mexican and aren’t in the mood for beer. The crew there at Anuva can tell you.
Anuva’s Wine Club & Wine Store
Recently a couple who spent their honeymoon in San Telmo Loft wrote asking us to suggest an Argentinean wine they could buy to celebrate their first anniversary. Like here, most U.S. supermarkets carry the same wines and they wanted something unique. We suggested Anuva’s Wine Store because they hand select their wines and we’ve never had one that wasn’t great.
What are your favorite Argentinean wines? Where do you go to find great boutique wines?
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