Kaiken Mai Malbec

Kaikenes are wild geese, native to Patagonia, that fly across the Andes between Chile and Argentina. In the same way, Montes, the Chilean winery, crossed the Andes to set up in Mendoza. Their vineyards are situated in the heart of Mendoza and further to the south in where many of the premium producers are now sourcing their fruit. The focus is primarily on Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, a variety that has been somewhat forgotten as Malbec has surfed one wave of success after another in the past decade. As a result, there are many old vineyards in Mendoza that produce excellent fruit. Kaiken's own vineyards supply 70% of their production requirements and 30% is from vineyards that they control.

Malbec,

The grapes used to make Mai are sourced from 100 year old vines at the estate vineyard in Vistalba (Lujan de Cuyo), where the soil consists of an 80cm top layer of alluvial sandy-loam containing riverbed pebbles. The old vines are very low yielding, producing small quantities of highly concentrated fruit. The vineyard is farmed biodynamically.

Grapes were hand-picked into 15kg trays to preserve the quality of the berries throughout the process. The must was fermented in small tanks over a period of 7 days at controlled temperatures of 25-30ºC. This was followed by post-fermentation maceration, which lasted approximately 20 days depending on the specific batch. The wine was aged in new French oak barrels, of which 70% was new, for 18 months prior to bottling.

This wine is deep red in colour, with violet tones. On the nose, it displays fruity aromas of plum and cherry combined with spicy notes of tobacco and cinnamon. An elegant and complex wine, with soft tannins and a long lingering finish.

Nolan - Text from the Spotlight on the Red Wines of the America’s Blog

Ok ok, enough obscure  grapes, this one is actually a Malbec. Kaiken are a producer that we have stocked for almost two decades for the sole reason that their wines are delicious.

The Kaiken winery is the Argentine wing of Chile’s Montes winery. A “Kaiken” is a species of goose that migrates across the Andes between the two countries, see what they did there? Founder, Aurelio Montes, set up Montes Wines to be fully sustainable in the 1980’s, in the early 2000’s he bought the winery that became Kaiken Wines and converted it and its vineyards to be again, fully sustainable.

Just like Montes, Kaiken produce wines to every price point. The Classico range is good, the Ultra level is a huge step up and is probably our bestselling Malbec for retail but why bother with good and great when instead we can drink exceptional? This is the flagship, the Kaiken Mai!

The Mai is produced from a single vineyard site in the Mendoza subregion of Lujan de Cuyo. Lujan de Cuyo is situated just South of Mendoza city itself and was the first recognised and delaminated wine region in Argentina. The vines are a whopping 100+ years old, if you consider Malbec’s home territory or Cahors in Southwest France, where vines are considered “old” at a mere 35 years old. The vines are planted in a soil that consists of an 80cm top layer of alluvial sandy-loam containing riverbed pebbles and the farming is fully biodynamic.

As a full B Corp certified company, what does this biodynamic approach look like? The four key points Kaiken try to address are regenerative agriculture, water conservation, increasing biodiversity, and reducing their carbon footprint.

Regenerative agriculture is about restoring the soil to its natural state, this involves using only organic fertilizers when strictly necessary and not using any synthetic fertilizers. Growing various cover crops protects the soil from erosion and also acts as a natural fertilizer when the cover crops are cut back, reintroducing vital nutrients.

Water conservation is achieved through drip irrigation only when needed. At the base of each vine there are sensors monitoring the soils water content at various depths, allowing irrigation to be applied at the direct point of need on a one to one basis for each vine, a far cry from the old-fashioned approach of flood irrigation!

Increasing biodiversity is important for many reasons. Setting aside land around the vineyard and in the vineyards themselves to promote native flora and fauna helps the land to self-regulate. One of the biggest benefits for us as humans with this natural balance in the vineyards, is that pests are kept in check, reducing and in Kaiken’s case illuminating the need for chemical sprays and pesticides which would accumulate up the food chain.

Kaiken monitor their carbon footprint, ever striving to reduce their impact on the environment around them. The aim it to optimise the efficiency of the winery and reduce emissions, one of the biggest changes at Kaiken was to reduce energy demands by switching the winery to be gravity fed, reducing the need for pumps.

The result of all this environmentally minded witchcraft is wonderful treat of a wine. At £60 a bottle you get a wine aged for 18 months in predominantly new French oak barrels, this wine smells expensive! Cherry and plum blend with cinnamon and tobacco. Certainly this is a treat wine, but it is on another level to any other Malbec I have ever come across!