What do you do with the biggest and emptiest winery
in the world? Mendoza is currently mulling over the remains of
the wine giant GIOL. Editor Charlie O´Malley
goes to see whats brewing.
In 1885 two Italian stowaways crossed the choppy Atlantic in search
of fame and fortune. They arrived penniless in Buenos Aires and
soon realised the grimy Tangolopolis was not for them. Near the
port they noticed a billboard outside a Mendoza government office
offering free train tickets to Mendoza and a piece of land to
anyone who knew anything about growing grapes and making wine.
They went in and signed up. It was to be a fateful decision. Within
15 years Don Bautista Geronimo Gargantini and and his more economically
named friend Juan Giol would be undisputed wine kings of Argentina
and owners of the biggest winery in the world. GIOL, as the bodega
came to be known, would in its heyday employ 3,500 people and
produce 43 million litres of wine a year. A huge pipe known as
a vinoduct would carry the wine 15 blocks to Maipu train station
where it was loaded into tanks and railed to thirsty Buenos Aires
.
Gargantini and Giol happened to be in the right place at the
right time. Argentina was booming and on its way to becoming one
of the richest countries in the world. They started out by buying
wine and taking it up the mountains to sell to Chileans working
on the Trans Andean railway. They acquired enough money to rent
a bodega. At the time demand was greater than supply and the business
prospered. They bought a winery and 48 hectares in Maipu, then
another winery and more hectares. Soon they had a wine empire
of 22 bodegas. They were awash with vino-pesos. It was no wonder
they initially called their enterprise La Colina de Oro - The
Hill of Gold.
The two men further strenghtened their profitable alliance by
marrying two sisters, the Bondino girls. They built two lavish,
palatial style mansions side by side, right next to their winery.
Between them they went on to have 18 children.
Then in 1911, for reasons as unclear as the wine they produced,
Gargantini decided to cash his chips, sell his share to his partner
and move back to Italy . Giol reigned as wine king for several
more years but perhaps missing his billionaire buddy moved back
to Europe for good in 1921.
GIOL the wine giant continued as a corporation. The two mansions
became a hotel and governers house respectively. The wine complex
had its own electric tram system (indeed the Russian trams acquired
to run on the city system were bought with GIOL wine). In 1954
the bodega became a goverment-owned collossus providing 30% of
Mendoza´s gross product. It was so powerful it could control
the price of wine and grapes. With time it became a gigantic monster
of inefficiency and corruption. The management were political
appointments who often knew little or nothing about making wine.
In the early 70s the two mansions were stripped of their lavish
furnishings and turned into sterile offices. The priceless contents
disappeared. The bodega became crippled with huge debts and was
losing 1 million dollars a month. Often, when low on cash, the
winery would flood the market with underpriced produce. Such dumping
played havoc with the local economy.
Privatisation was the nail in the coffin and the once great bodega
closed its doors in 1989. The vineyards have since given way to
urban sprawl but the 14-hectare winery still stands derelict and
forlorn. Walking around its huge cylindrical silos (did they really
hold wine?) you feel like you`re in an abandoned oil refinery,
not a winery. In 1993 the municipilidad of Maipu took it over.
The massive concrete tanks now serve as archive storage warehouses.
Other buildings serve as schools and social welfare offices yet
in general the area has an abandoned feel to it.
More in tune with the past, there is now a cooperative of 19
grape producers called Lumai, producing 250,000 litres of wine
and employing 5 people. The mansions have been declared national
monuments and a restaurant called Cava Vieja operates from the
original wine cellars. You can even do a tour of what is still
the largest capacity winery in South America . There are more
ambitious plans. Pepe Tommelini, a marketing consultant working
on a feasability study for the municipilidad has a vision of the
future that matches this great winery in size. He wants to build
a Disneyland of wine, with hotels, casinos and theme park rides.
"This is my dream," says Pepe, "to turn this place
of heritage and astounding history into a place called Vinolandia
, where people can experience the wine history of Argentina ".
Improbable, you might say and perhaps a pipe dream. Just like
the pipe dream of two stowaways in 1885.
