2016 Colome Estate Torrontes Salta Argentina 750 ml

2016’s Bargain White to Beat: The Under-$13 Colomé Torrontés

There are two ways to get to the high desert oasis of Bodega Colomé in the northwestern corner of Argentina. If you’re on a budget, you catch the early morning, jaw-rattling SUV shuttle over the rutted countryside roads. If you’re a jetsetter, as most visitors are, you can sleep in, sip café con leche at the hotel, then head to the helicopter pad. We recommend the latter, unless your travel companion is a chiropractor!

Most who make the trip out to Donald Hess’s South American mountain getaway come to get spoiled at the no-expense-spared inn and spa. Not us. We had a date with Thibaut Delmotte, the winemaker at Colomé who oversees the estate’s magnificent, ancient vines.

Bodega Colomé was founded in 1831, purportedly by the Spanish governor of Salta. In 1854, the governor’s daughter Ascensión brought and planted the first pre-phylloxera vines at Colomé.

When Donald Hess purchased Colomé in 2001, the Napa Valley icon quickly raised the bar on what many consider the most audacious viticultural development project in the world. Hess’s team, seduced by the cleansing climate — the mild days, cold nights, and powerful UV rays — adopted rigorous biodynamic farming protocols. Then they helped build housing, a school, and a community center to entice Salta labor to the high ground.

When you first walk these rows, feel the hot sun and the steady breeze, you can’t help but be stunned by the glowing health of the vines. Incredibly, more than 160 years after the governor’s daughter smuggled in that French budwood, her vineyard continues to push out a precious crop of thick-skin clusters, making for the most exquisitely mineral and exotic Torrontés in Argentina.  

Drawn entirely from 30- to 60-year-old vines perched at 5,500-7,500 feet in elevation, Torrontés yields at Colomé are roughly half those of Mendoza. While the sun shines brightly in the high desert, summer days are cool and nights are cold, allowing these small-berry clusters to ripen slowly, incrementally, nursing out gorgeous citronelle concentration without sacrificing a gram of riveting mountain acidity. In the word of Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, Colomé’s “high altitude wines are truly unique.”

In the superb Salta harvest of 2016, Colomé’s small Torrontés crop wouldn’t be harvested until June. The alcohol level is modest, a Burgundian 13.5%, while pH is a refreshing 3.6. Acids are firm at 5.1 grams/liter. At a time when it’s nearly impossible to uncover truly inspired, critically acclaimed, under-$13 white wines, Delmotte crafted just that — shocking Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, which pinned on 90+, a rarity for a bottle of that price.

But rarer still was the glowing language Parker’s publication lavished on Delmotte’s latest effort, pouring unprecedented praise on the vintage and finding the wines “better than ever.” The Advocate gushed: “This is the best young Torrontés I’ve had from Colomé. Kudos to winemaker Thibaud Delmotte and his team!”

The 2016 Colomé Torrontés Salta is pale golden to the rim, infused with piercing aromas of white flowers, peach, and anise. Almost Burgundian in its refinement, the attack is richly vibrant and pure, filled with ripe citrus, apricot, and orchard pit, finishing with bracing, high-altitude acidity.

$22 on release. A razor-sharp $12.99 from WineAccess. 90+ points from Wine Advocate, the “the best young Torrontes” yet. The bad news? Just 600 bottles to go around of the #1 New World bargain of the year.