Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/580744
106 { THE SOMM JOURNAL } OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2015 { what we're tasting } FIRST STOP: SAN FRANCISCO by Jonathan Cristaldi / photos by Stephanie Secrest Marcos Fernández, Head Winemaker for Argentina's Doña Paula Estate, and Mario Monticelli, Head Winemaker for Trinchero Napa Valley, played co-hosts to a group of San Francisco's top sommeliers and buyers at Salt House on a recent Tuesday afternoon. Both Doña Paula and Trinchero Napa Valley offer estate-grown, single-vineyard wines. In a kind of all-star winemaker ping pong match—with Malbec grapes acting as the ping pong balls—the luncheon was more a liquid tournament aimed at highlighting differences in Malbec styles between Napa-grown and -produced wines and Mendoza-grown and -produced wines. Tasting the wines side-by-side, those differences practically leaped from the glass. Vintage variation, according to Fernández, is less an issue in Mendoza Masters of Malbec WINEMAKERS MARCOS FERNÁNDEZ OF ARGENTINA'S DOÑA PAULA ESTATE AND MARIO MONTECELLI OF TRINCHERO NAPA VALLEY TAKE CALIFORNIA BY STORM Marcos Fernández (left), Head Winemakerfor Doña Paula Estate, and Trinchero Napa Valley Head Winemaker Mario Monticelli at Salt House in San Francisco. Tamara Forward, Sommelier at Michael Mina San Francisco, noses a glass of the Doña Paula 2013 Black Edition Malbec from Luján de Cuyo, a sub-region of Mendoza Province in Argentina.