Dare to Drink Strange

Most of Mendoza bets on Malbec and stops there. At the far end of the wine route, where the road runs out against the Cordillera Frontal, one family bottles sixteen grapes on their own. Six of them are varieties you could hunt across Argentina and never find standing alone. You can't buy a single bottle in the States, and by the end of this you won't want to. You'll want to go find the strange grape on your own shelf instead.

Pócima is Emilio Abrahan, his wife Analía Fortunato, and their daughters Mora and Ema. The motto on every shirt reads grandes vinos hechos en familia, great wines made by a family. It's a description of the staff list, not a slogan.

Emilio trained as an enologist, spent more than a decade making wine for well-known Mendoza houses, and taught the subject at the Universidad Maza's Valle de Uco campus. Then he and Analía did the arithmetic that most winemakers on someone else's payroll eventually do. Working for themselves, at small scale, the wine could finally carry their own name. They've made wine in their own cellar since 2019.

The name is a small joke. Pócima means potion, and the label is a triquetra, the three-cornered knot the family ties to old stories of magic and brewing. For a winery that mixes more grapes than anyone else in the valley, it fits.

Pócima sits at the foot of the Cordillera Frontal, the last winery on the wine route. The vineyards average around 1,270 meters, and nearly everything the family works is above 1,200. That height buys two things Emilio names plainly: enough swing between hot day and cold night to ripen the skins and seeds fully, and enough cold to keep the grapes' own acidity intact. He's after concentration that still reads as elegant, and he'll tell you elegance is the harder half.

So the family bottles sixteen single-varietal wines in small lots, and commits to making each one again rather than dropping it after a vintage. Malbec and Cabernet, sure. But also Marselan, a French crossing from 1961. Ancellotta, which usually just lends color to Lambrusco. Aglianico, the tannic monster of southern Italy. Mourvèdre, which normally props up a Bandol. And a pure Carménère, almost unheard of on its own in Argentina. Any one of those, bottled alone in Malbec country, is worth crossing a room for.

Above the range sits their top wine, a bottling called Ema, named for the youngest daughter by a family vote on slips of paper. The name, by chance, spells the initials of the three who chose it. All four of them are in the bottle. Put that beside the sixteen varietals and it stops reading as showing off. It reads as a family that refused to make just one wine.

The full profile, with the family's own photos, is on the site here.

Pócima isn't sold in the United States, and that's on purpose. The family sells straight from the cellar in Los Árboles, and plenty of American visitors leave with bottles in their luggage. If you're ever near Tunuyán, they're open by reservation seven days a week — book through @pocimawines on Instagram. Otherwise there's nothing here for me to sell you. I'd rather say that than point you at an empty cart.

But Emilio's advice travels even if the wine doesn't:

You can act on that this weekend without leaving your zip code. Next time you're at a good shop, walk past the Malbec and the Cabernet and ask for one grape you can't pronounce. A Carménère on its own, if they have it. A Marselan. A Mourvèdre that isn't hiding inside a Rhône blend. You'll usually pay less than the famous bottle beside it, and worst case, you learn something. That's the underdog bet. A family at the end of the wine route makes it sixteen times over.

— Chris Berry

P.S. If someone forwarded you this and you want the weekly underdog read, the Starter List is ten lesser-known bottles under $25, free. No snobbery, just good wine.