The estate is situated in Rio Negro Valley. The climate is dry. Maximum 30% humidity and 7 inches of rain/year make the area free of diseases. There is no pollution, meaning that there is a high purity of sunlight. The vines were planted in 1955. The grapes are 95% Malbec and 5% Merlot. They are irrigated up to four times a year.Our vineyards of Noemía as well as of J.Alberto are both cultivated Bio-Dynamically. The grapes formed hard skins and were small berries, but with the warm nights, the polyphenols didn’t ripen as much as we could wish for.Also the sugars went quite high for our area.In other words a year of great luminosity and ripeness. After the fermentation, the wine was decanted by gravity into 30% new French oak barrels of the finest quality one can get, the remainder 60% into second “wine” or second use barrels (the ones used for the Noemía!) for a period of, this year, 8,5 months. Normally J.Alberto can stay up to 11 months in wood, but this year we found the wine perfect.