Cheval des Andes: A Piece of France at the Foot of the Andes
At Cheval des Andes, a young team, two Mendoza vineyards and a new winery are dedicated to a single wine. Our visit revealed how French discipline is being reinterpreted at the foot of the Andes, and why the 2021 vintage stood above the rest.
Inside a young team’s pursuit of a single wine, a new winery built around precision and a project that is becoming more itself by drawing closer to its French origins.
The first thing that caught my attention at Cheval des Andes was not the mountain range, although the Andes seemed to follow us everywhere. It was how green the property looked.
Mendoza was only beginning to emerge from winter. Around us, much of the landscape still carried the dry, pale colours of the season, yet the estate in Las Compuertas was alive with grass, cover crops, trees, birds and water. Beyond the vineyard, a reservoir reflected the blue sky. Farther ahead, the curved concrete roof of a new winery appeared to rise from the ground rather than sit on top of it.
The scene already contained much of what I would understand during the visit. Cheval des Andes may have been created through a meeting between France and Argentina, but this is no simple transplantation of Bordeaux to Mendoza. It is a project built on the discipline of one culture and the raw material of another, continually asking how far precision can take a wine without removing it from its place.
Noelia welcomed us and remained with us throughout the visit. She works in hospitality, but that description feels incomplete after spending time with her. Cheval des Andes has a small structure, and people carry more than one responsibility. She moved easily between the history of the estate, the details of individual vineyard parcels, irrigation, architecture and the logic behind the wines we would taste later.
She also introduced one of the most revealing facts about the team. The five people who form the estate’s leadership are all young; at 33, Noelia described herself as the oldest among them. What could have sounded like a curiosity became more meaningful as we walked. This is a new generation entrusted with a project whose standards were defined long before most of them arrived.
There is youth here, but very little improvisation.
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