Carmelo Patti: Old School in the New World
From the outside looking in, Carmelo Patti is just another Italian-Argentinean man making wine in his garage.
Most days of the week, he is here, at work in the stark cement warehouse-turned-winery, known as Bodega El Lagar, tucked away in the Luján de Cuyo region of Mendoza.
The street outside is scarcely marked with a street sign, but the road is well-traveled by those who have heard his name through the grapevine – which is very much Carmelo’s style. Never once has he signed onto a marketing campaign, or paid an agency to publicize his name. He prefers to serve the wine, and regale you with stories about how it came to be.
After working in a variety of Mendoza wineries since the early 70s, Carmelo finally crafted his first personal vintage in 1999. Today, the winery tour at Bodega El Lagar, feels more like an informal walk through his wine workshop than anything else. As he points out the barrels to the left and the tanks to the right, you won’t know what to focus on: his argentine anecdotes or the wine lessons he weaves in every now and then.
“You learn about wine by comparing,” says Carmelo, emphasizing the importance of doing vertical and varietal tastings. “You don’t know anything about wine if you don’t have something to compare it to.”
But comparing Carmelo’s wines to those produced by wineries just down the road, can be a bit of a perplexing undertaking. Argentina is an arena centered on the consumption of robust, fruit-forward wines that still have all the zest and power of youth, and Carmelo´s creations can feel like something completely out of left field.
His wines are carefully and patiently aged – incorporating the virtues of French oak without ever doing so heavy-handedly, and express layers of minerality and spice without ever marginalizing the fruit. He is old-school and old-world, and so – in many ways – are his wines. But what are Old World style wines doing in the heart of Argentina’s wine country? They are making noise. Lots of it.
He humbly talks about the not-so-humble reputation of his wines, handing over newspaper clippings and fan-made t-shirts with his face printed across the knitted fabric. And at that moment, standing in the drab white-washed tasting room adorned with little more than a plastic card table, a thought rises to the surface: Carmelo Patti is a trending cult winemaker.
The small parking lot outside the garage/ warehouse/ winery shows fresh tire treads daily, and his walk-in policy for attending visitors is just barely holding up against the pressure of the international posse clamoring to meet him.
While he may come from the old-school, this winemaker teaches a lesson that all students of wine need to hear: “Find the right wine,” he says. “Then find the right moment to drink it.” Even if that means you have to wait decades, only to uncork the bottle in a renovated garage with a small group of strangers. Which is, after all what Carmelo does, day in and day out. Because he knows that, “when the wine is truly ready, that’s the best there is.”
What to drink when you’re there:
Cabernet Sauvignon 2005
This unique Cabernet Sauvignon, expresses jammy red fruit aromas laced with flavors of smoke, and toast. Its year of French oak aging and extensive bottle aging, have crafted supreme balance, firm tannins, and a persistent finish the echoes back flavors strawberry and raspberry marmalade ending with the slightest prick of black pepper.
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