Alamos 2011 Malbec

There's a plethora of very tasty and very inexpensive Argentine Malbec on store shelves right now. Seems like you can grab just about any bottle you see and you'll take home a winner! Another fairly inexpensive Malbec out there is the Alamos 2011, which you should be able to find for $12 or less.

This went really well with a roast pork I recently prepared with some butternut squash and green beans. A simple meal, but the wine brought a delicious elegance to the table with some sturdy tannins on the finish. Like many Malbecs, it was dark, inky; the nose a delicate mixture of floral and fruit scents with a racy flavor of blackberry. This is definitely a good find, but I think for the price and the taste I might lean more toward the Diseño I recently wrote about.

I rate this with an 8 using my scale at the left.

Diseño old vine Malbec

Oh the joy of finding a great value! The 2011 Diseño old vine Malbec is a wine crafted in the great tradition of Argentine Malbec that tastes much better than you would think for a $10 bottle. Malbec at this price point can be jammy with way too much fruit, but not this one!

It has the hefty structure and complexity of great Malbec and while the fruit is definitely there, it's balanced on a smooth beam of mineral and subtle notes of tobacco. When pouring you immediately see its dark inky color, a deep purple so dark it verges on black. The nose is subtle and floral rather than like a jar of Smuckers.

It's supremely drinkable and a great food match, doing well with anything from spicy tomato sauce pasta with spicy Italian sausage, to sauteéd boneless chicken thighs. I most recently had this with a spiced pork chop agrodolce accompanied with some lemon garlic Brussels sprouts and butternut squash; it was very good! The pork chop is very easy to prepare and you can find the recipe on my Pinterest page.

I rate this an 8.5 on my scale at the left.

Altos las Hormigas, 2010 Malbec Clásico, Mendoza

The nose right from the beginning signals a light and delicate aroma, minerally, but then you begin to wonder: will it be subtle and delicious, or thin and weak?

As it turned out, this wine, a great find at $10, is a fairly complex drink that combines strong fruit with blackberry and cassis, but is delivered on a wonderful mineral beam giving it a light presence more like a Burgundy rather than a Malbec from Argentina.

It has a rich, purple coloring like grape juice, but despite that it delivers a spicy nose, a little hot with the 14.2 percent alcohol, but the tannin on the finish is smooth and leaves a delicious snap.

I had this with a rib eye steak, mashed potatoes with goat cheese mixed in, and mixed vegetables – a very basic meal. And it was superb!

Seriously, you can’t beat the $10 price, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you could find it a bit cheaper.

I rate this an 8.5 using my scale at the left.

Los Nevados

The Mendoza region of Argentina is probably best known for Malbec, so it may come as a surprise that more and more land is being planted with Chardonnay. The Los Nevados 2010 is very inexpensive at less than $10 a bottle, and being unoaked, it is an excellent choice for making kir.

Beyond that, there’s nothing truly remarkable about this wine. It is fresh and vivacious with a crisp finish and is excellent for drinking on its own. These very qualities make it highly suitable for mixing with crème de cassis, turning it into the popular aperitif from Provence. You can serve with a variety of cheeses – goat cheese works really well, as well as pungent French cheeses – or smoked salmon.

So if you’re looking for something different to serve with appetizers, consider this kir and this Chardonnay will work excellently.

I rate this wine with a 7.5 using my scale at the left.

Altos las Hormigas 2007

Altos las Hormigas is a well-known house in the Mendoza region of Argentina and its Vineyard Selection Reserva is a consistent performer with the 2007 vintage sustaining that tradition. In fact, the 2002 vintage was ranked in Wine Spectator’s top 50 of the top 100 wines available in 2005. Wine Spectator had high praise for the 2007 vintage as well, rating it with an excellent score of 91.

This is an inky wine with a deep violet color with a nose that is dense and fruity with a spice note of pepper and forest and caramel smoothness that is soft and delicious. And that’s just the nose!

The first taste shows firm tannin with blackberry and cedar. Wine Spectator indicated that it was a “drink now” wine, but I really think this wine had a few more years available in the cellar, er, my closet. As the wine opened up, the juiciness and spice was retained and it was delicious to slosh it around in my mouth, mixing with bits of food.

It was served with a beef chuck roast marinated in a bulgolgi sauce for several hours and served very rare. The fruit of the bulgolgi marinade matched excellently with the boldness of this Malbec. A really excellent food-friendly wine.

I’ll rate this with a 9 using my scale at the left.

A wine bar weekend

On Saturday a new friend of mine and I went to a wine bar in Lincoln Park and sampled two of their flights, one white and the other red. My friend, Andrew, wanted to learn more about wine and the wine bar was a perfect solution.

D.O.C. Wine Bar has many locations throughout Chicagoland, and like many wine bars, offers you the opportunity to sample flights of similar wines so you can get an idea of what a region offers or what a varietal offers. It’s a great way for neophytes to learn about varietals and regions, as well as learn the techniques to discern flavor differences and test your pallet. For more experienced wine drinkers, these wine bars can present opportunities with their various flights to sample new wines you may be unaware of, as well as give you opportunities to sample varietals that you might normally not purchase.

The abbreviation D.O.C. in Italian is for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, and is the equivalent to France’s Appelation D’Origine Contrôlee. It reflects a wine region’s denomination designation, and for the DOC, this is defined by the geographic area of production and specifies the varietals that may be used for wine making in order to earn that designation. This board also controls the minimum alcohol content in the wine, the maximum allowable yield with the grapes, and specifications for aging.

For our tastings, Andrew and I started off with three wines in the “Euro trash” flight, a curiously named trio of varietals that I am aware of, but haven’t much experience drinking. I tapped my notes into my iPhone as we drank, and below is what I chronicled.

Strele 2009 Soave, Vento, Italy: Light nose, orchard fruit, apple, peach, a very light flavor, not too sweet, very fresh and crisp, juicy.

Reventos 2009 Muscat/Macabeo, Penedes, Spain: Nose more rustic, longer finish, more herbal, fruit gradually exposed, a curious, almost medicinal flavor, not unpleasant.

Chateau Moncontour 2009, Chenin Blanc, Vouvray, Loire Valley, France: Light, fresh nose, juicy, spicy apple, light finish, best of the three.

Andrew and I both agreed we thought it interesting how the three wines were ordered. The Soave presented juicy and delicious orchard fruit followed next by the Muscat, which was decidedly more herbal and even a bit suppressed. Andrew didn’t care much for it, but I thought it good, though very different from the first. And then the Chablis placed itself right in the middle, having both the light juiciness of the orchard fruit, but still presenting complexity and mineral qualities.

We thought, then, that the ordering was deliberate, so when we ordered a Pinot Noir flight next, we anticipated a similar progression. Before tasting, I explained to Andrew why Pinot Noir can be so beguiling, how difficult it is to grow and how delicate it is to craft into good wine. Nebbiolo is also like this, which is why red Burgundy and Barolos can be such huge disappointments at times: both tend to be expensive, and both varietals are very similar in character. So when Burgundy or Barolo is made well, these wines are extraordinary. But when made poorly, they can be enormous duds.

Nieto 2010 Pinot Noir, Mendoza, Argentina: Can’t peg the nose, the smell is familiar, but can’t name it. A very young wine, thin, watery, no finish. Color a beautiful transparent ruby.

Block Nine 2009, Pinot Noir, California: Light berry nose, bit of spice, tannin noticeable, longer finish, a hint of cinnamon. Tasty, but nothing special.

Vincent Sauvestre 2008, Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France: Nothing on the nose, literally sans smell, bright fruit, but again diluted.

With this flight, we experienced the ephemeral quality that is Pinot Noir. All three wines were generally disappointments in my book, although I must say it was curious to see a Pinot Noir from the Mendoza region of Argentina. If I hadn’t of done this, I wouldn’t have known about the fact there are growers dabbling with Pinot Noir in Argentina.

Repeat visits to wine bars like this are a good idea because the tasting flights do change periodically, so there will be something of interest. And the bottle selection can be relatively deep, although rather expensive, particularly for the higher end wines. For example, D.O.C. has a Chassagne-Montrachet that goes for $116 a bottle, and a Chateuneuf-du-Pape that goes for more than $300.

All in all a delightful experience and one that shall be repeated.

Are there similar wine bars in your area? Tell me about them and your experiences by leaving a comment. What new wine have you discovered through similar tasting flights?

Malbec mania

Bodega Norton is a solid producer of Argentine wines from the Mendoza region. The wines are also frequently inexpensive. A good bet just about every time it is released is the Bodega Norton Reserva Malbec, and the 2007 vintage is out on store shelves right now. Rated with 90 points from Wine Spectator, you should be able to find this gem for less than $14.

The first one I opened had me worried. The nose was so heavy with blackberry it was like sniffing a jar of Smucker’s jam. Really jammy. But when you let this one breathe for a while, the nose becomes delicate and the blackberry jam recedes to the background. The wine has a beautiful and rich, deep garnet color. It’s a wine that’s easily influenced by other aromas in the vicinity. The tannins are firm but not quite chewy, and there is a slight mushroom quality that goes really well with beef.

I'll give it an 8.5 using my scale at the left.

A consistent Malbec

It’s always a delight to find a producer you can count on, and the Don Miguel Gascón Malbecs from the Mendoza region of Argentina is such a find. The 2009 vintage of this wine can be had for as little as $9, although $11 is more common. The wines of Bodegas Escorihuela have consistently scored with high 80s for the past decade. And all of them are inexpensive.

The 2009 vintage is rich with earthy flavors melding well with delicate fruit. It has enough heft that if you bought a case, it would keep well for at least a year. While I could not find a rating for the 2009 vintage, I rate it with an 8.5 using my scale at the left.