Barrels, Bottles and Explosions 

With the wine fermented, we had to find a way to store it while it was resting. And what better vessel than small oak barrels that had been used many times, for a little infusion of oxygen without leaving toasty oak flavour in our wine. The news of “La Belga” looking for used barrels travelled quickly, and with some bluffing and a wad of cash, I managed to get barrels that looked decent enough and smelled Brett-free (meaning: less risk our wines would smell and taste like a horse stable). With the help of friends, we got the barrels from the bodegas to our garage. Now we just needed to get the wine from the fermentation vat into the barrels. Sounds easy, but it involved someone gently siphoning off the fermented juice from the bottom of the tank, while someone got in the tank and gently pressed the thick layers of skins and stems, someone monitored the tiny hoses and tiny pump to avoid any of the particles remaining in the wine would clog the pump (spoiler: the pump did get clogged), and someone holding the hose and checking the barrel did not overflow.

I left Argentina shortly after, leaving the barrels and the wine in Emi’s care. During one of our many car rides that harvest, we had decided the wine would have to follow me to Belgium, and it would be the first of many Nova Radix wines. And so it happened that in June 2024, I signed the notarial deed for Nova Radix BV and embarked on an administrative adventure to figure out how to bring wines from native grapes into Belgium. After a season of winemaking, a new season of setting up a business had started.

By August, our wines were ready to be bottled. By then, it was also clear that the biggest challenge would not be to get the wine into Belgium, but rather to get the wine out of Argentina. So off I went again to meet Emi in Tupungato to bottle our wines and to organize the export. The late summer heat that had met me in February on the tarmac in Mendoza was replaced by an icy dry wind. There was a silence hanging over the empty streets of Tupungato, and the vibrant colors of summer had morphed into subdued whites and grey. The little house I had stayed at months before looked familiar but felt ice cold. I wondered if everything and everyone around me had gone into hibernation. “It’s normal”, Emi said. “How would people work and party so hard in harvest season if they do not sleep and chill in winter?”

Standing in front of our barrels, I almost did not dare to open them. Without saying a word, Emi and I took a sip of the white wine, looked up and smiled. It was not just good. It was perfect. We tried the red next and we were stunned. It was as precise as we could have dreamed. And thanks to a little good will, good luck and good negotiation skills, a day later we jumped through the last bureaucratic hurdle for export (or so we thought).

We had wine, we had bottles, we had corks, we had papers. We were ready to bottle. As we arrived at dawn at the bottling line, I heard the comforting sound of clinking bottles. The line was running and our rosado was to be bottled next.

Emi and I shared a coffee watching the sun rise when our first bottle exploded in the bottling line. So did our second and our third. And with those bangs, a new season of letting go and trusting the process started for me.