The man has many lives. He was a musician and video artist, professional poker player and golfer. Meier now owns a hundred polo ponies, is a large-scale landowner and the operator of an organic cattle breeding farm as well as a sheep farm, grows organic soya, linseed and maize and calls an organic winery his own – with all of this in Argentina.

In Zürich he’s the proprietor of the “Bärengasse” restaurant and a delicatessen store with his own products bearing the name of his Argentinian winery: “Ojo de Agua” (eye of the water).

“Once I perfect something I have to move on to something new.” Meier sees himself as a mountain climber: addicted to climbing unfamiliar peaks in order to find out something new about himself. “I’m an idealist as long as I can afford it to be one. And I make sure that the idealist in me doesn’t kiss the realist to death.”

Aspiring to combine oenology and ecology, to respect nature and cultivate the product, he produces wines that are unique in typicality from Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes grown in Alto Agrelo situated in the Argentinian Mendoza region. “Pleasure makes you work” is his credo. This is because the only people who can enjoy something are those who understand and realize it. This applies equally to a Beethoven string quartet and to wine, with its taste of grapes, fresh fruit and a little wood.

Alto Agrelo is viewed as Mendoza’s best wine-growing area. Many large producers buy their grapes here or are headquartered in the region. The dry, stony, sandy soils are extremely rich in minerals – a consequence of millions of years of alluvial deposits from Andean meltwater.

The meltwater also fills the rivers and groundwater lakes of the surrounding area, which vintners use to irrigate their vineyards. Without irrigation not much would be happening in the bone-dry locations. Only the gentle drop-by-drop supply of moisture guarantees the regular quality of the grapes.

Further information is available at www.ojodevino.com.

Written by Rainer Meier