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.

A “ghostly” and “insane” dinner

I enjoyed another wine tasting menu while in Jerome, Arizona, and I also want to share with you the wines I drank with a nearly splendid meal I had at The Asylum, the restaurant in the Jerome Grand Hotel (which allegedly is haunted!).

When I saw that The Asylum had a tasting menu, I knew I had to try it. You may select four wines from their tasting menu for a reasonable price of $10. It’s a great opportunity to try new varietals as well as new producers.

My first choice was the Schwartzbock Grüner Veltliner 2009. This was a light, fresh, juicy and crisp Austrian wine, one of my favorite varietals. I loved this one.

The next one was a Spanish blend that was 60 percent Verdejo, 25 percent Viura and 15 percent Sauvignon Blanc. The Con Class Rueda 2009 was full of orchard fruit on the nose and had a clean mineral taste with a bit of lemon. It finished like a cool mountain stream lined with Colorado columbine. It was, indeed, a delightful wine.

Moving on to reds, I tasted the Los Lobos Malbec 2009, a very interesting wine from Mendoza that was spicy on the nose with a hint of cassis. Yet despite that intriguing aroma, the wine was very subtle on the pallet without much tannin. The finish was smooth and nice. All the flavors were very interesting and I couldn’t quite nail them down, but I know that this is a wine that I would enjoy a bottle of.

My final wine of the flight was the Villa Pozzi Nero d’Avola 2009 from Sicily. I’ve been disappointed by these wines in the past, but this one redeemed all its brethren. It had a rich, blackberry nose heavy with fruit, but not off-putting. It was delicious, juicy with plum and cherry with a tight, dry finish. You don’t taste the tannin until the finish, which leads me to think that this has some closet time potential. This was very good, certainly the best Nero d’Avola I’ve had after a string of disappointments. In fact, I ordered a full glass of this to enjoy with my entree, their delicious grilled Achiote rubbed pork tenderloin, prepared perfectly.

The previous night I had dinner at The Asylum as well, they had so many good wines! I began that evening with the Indaba 2010 Chenin Blanc from the Western Cape, South Africa. I haven’t had much success with South African wines, but this was a nice find. It was smooth and delicate like an excellent Chenin Blanc, ripe with apple, pear, and even a bit of pepper on the finish.

My dinner was a Rocky Point shrimp scampi with tomato Beurre Blanc and shredded Parmesan brown rice. With this I had the Zolo 2010 Torrontes from Mendoza. The Torrontes had a really nice bite with my appetizer, a delicious butternut squash soup that was divine! By the way, if you visit the restaurant’s website, you can find the recipe! The wine was also quite good with the entrée, although the shrimp was a tad overcooked.

All in all, the wines found at The Asylum were delicious and the variety inspiring.

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 delicious left hook

When the Aussies do Shiraz right they do it awesomely, and the 2007 vintage of The Boxer was spot on. Mollydooker of South Australia produces many excellent wines, and most are reasonably priced.

I picked up this version of The Boxer about a year ago, and it survived the horrendous heat of last summer when my closet was routinely 80 degrees; not the best of conditions for storing wine.

At first taste, this wine presented a luscious, almost buttery flavor of rich blackberries and a smooth spiciness that finished long and elegantly. Damn, this was good!

This was served with a basic steak meal, except that the New York strip was bagged ahead of time in a Korean barbecue marinade normally used for chicken and pork, where it sat for about 4 hours. It gives the meat a smoky sweetness that went well with the spice of this Shiraz. Served also with butternut squash seasoned with cinnamon with a side of mixed veggies, the wine tended to lose its spice when accompanying the squash, but the fruit remained full and mouthwatering. And at the end of the meal, the spice returned for a flavorful finish.

Good stuff. I rate it with a 9 using my scale at the left.

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.

A decent New World Chardonnay

When looking for an inexpensive Chardonnay from a New World producer (and even when tasting some expensive New World Chardonnays), I have been so disappointed that I would exclaim that I don’t like Chardonnay the way some might say they dislike Merlot. My complaint is that New World Chardonnay is often too cloying, too much like an over-ripe peach that is about to spoil. They remind me of Elton John’s song “Rotten Peaches.” And then one day I was caught in my contradiction, because I frequently sing the praise of white Burgundy, which is, of course, Chardonnay. So my lament has changed to that of, “Why can’t New World producers create something like a white Burgundy?”

One comes pretty dang close, and that is the Chilean producer Cousiño-Macul. Its 2009 Chardonnay is a delightful quaff that can be had for $10 per bottle, sometimes less. This wine has a round and fleshy taste of both light citrus and orchard fruit with a brilliant finish that has a subtle mineral quality: None of that cloying puffiness of many other inexpensive Chardonnays from the New World.

Cousiño-Macul has been around for a while; it was founded in 1856 in the Maipo Valley. This winery has been a very-consistent producer over the years, and not just with its whites, but with its red varieties as well.

I drank this one several weeks back with my friend Curt, and as I recall, it was with a meal of some pan-seared salmon with a vegetable medley of sautéed peppers and summer squash. It had the right crispness and fruit for the salmon, and would make a suitable choice for a similar dish any time.

This is a great value wine that ought to bring you nothing but praise should you bring it to a dinner party. And for less than $10, I’ll be buying this one again. I rate it with an 8.5 from my scale at the left.

Two powerhouse picks

Last night I played host again for a dinner party to present two wines from my closet that I thought were ready for drinking. Dionysus must have been smiling upon my humble selections.

The first was a 2002 Malbec from Altos Las Hormigas, the Reserva Vina Hormigas. In 2005 this wine was rated in the top 50 of the top 100 best wines of the year (it was ranked 42) by Wine Spectator. WS scored it 92, and when it was reviewed, the suggested price of $25 didn’t seem that bad for such a highly regarded wine. It was released in 2005, so I’m guessing that is when I purchased it (I can’t remember if I bought more than one bottle at the time). The drink window, as suggested by WS, closed in 2010. To say the least, I was a bit nervous, given the fact my wine cellar is a closet.

The second wine was a 2000 Chateauneuf du Pape cuvee reserve from Domaine du Pegau. Chateauneuf du Pape is my favorite wine, and I had drank this particular bottling before. I believe I purchased two bottles in 2003 when it was released. I got it for $39, which seemed like a reasonable price. When I brought it home and looked it up, I saw that WS scored it at 89, describing it with praise. It had a much longer drink window, all the way to 2020. But again, I’d been holding on to this one for at least seven years. And when I pulled it out from my closet, I saw the wine level in the bottle had dropped to about a half-inch below the foil at the top. Also, the foil at the top was slightly bulged. The signs made me nervous.

Friends Curt, Nate and Steve came over. It was the night before Nate and Steve were to fly to Puerto Vallarta for a vacation. I still had two, quite large, bison top sirloins that I wanted to cook because they had already been in the freezer since the Oscars and I didn’t want them to get freezer burned. I prepared almost the same meal as the one served on Oscar night, with just two modifications: no portabella mushrooms this time, and instead of parsnips, I had parsley roots.

That turned out to be a rather serendipitous error. I thought I was buying parsnips, but when I got them home, I realized my error. Not sure how to prepare them, I did some quick research on the Web and determined I could cook them pretty much the same way as I did the parsnips. I washed them, cut the top and greens off, sliced them down the middle, and put them into a glass baking dish that I had heavily smeared with butter. Then I sprinkled raw sugar on them before roasting. Because I needed a much lower temperature for roasting the bison, I put the parsley root in the oven at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, then turned the oven down to 275, the roasting temperature for the bison.

The beet greens were such a hit the last time (I really liked them too), I repeated the dish. The beets were easy and I boiled them well ahead of time. Raw beets take a long time to boil. The key to it is you leave about two inches of green stems on the beet when you boil them. After they are done, put them in cold water until their cool enough to handle and you just rub the skin off the beet. I set them aside in the refrigerator, my intent to microwave them just before serving. At this time also, I complete all the prep work for the greens; my years working as a restaurant cook taught me some very helpful tricks.

For the greens, I washed them thoroughly, using a large pan filled with cold water. I’d let the greens soak for a while each time as well when I’d change the water to ensure they’d stay crisp. I soaked and rinsed them at least three times. Cut off the stems, then chop the greens, after which I placed in a colander to drain. For the other ingredients, I used half a red onion finely chopped, as well as four medium carrots, also finely chopped. I set aside the chopped items, as well as three garlic cloves, and then I chopped two thick slabs of bacon.

Another trick I learned was preparing the wine. The night before I brought the bottles out and set them upright to let whatever sediment was there drift to the bottom. Then, about three hours before the intended dinner hour, I put both bottles in the refrigerator for about 90 minutes. After this, I take the bottles out so the wine will gradually warm to a proper serving temperature. I have found this works really well, particularly if the wine has been stored at a room temperature in the mid to high 70s. This trick seems to temper the wine’s character and subdue the alcohol so the wine doesn’t come out too hot. If you try this, be sure that it’s done well ahead of serving time, because you don’t want a red wine to be served too cold; it should have 90 minutes to two hours outside of the fridge to re-warm.

The first item to start cooking was the parsley root. Once that was in the oven, I opened the Malbec first. The cork came out intact, and a sniff revealed no taint. So far so good. I then sniffed from the bottle and a beautiful bouquet of fruit and something else that smelled delicious let me know that this one was still good. I poured a small taste, looked at its deep color of currant, took another heady sniff, then tasted. I was shocked! Instead of a firm and jammy Malbec as I had anticipated, I tasted rich mineral and soft tannin that I knew would soon firm up. Curt later told me when he tasted it, it also reminded him of something other than an Argentine Malbec. In fact, he said it reminded him of a French Rhone, in particular a Gigondas. I agreed that this also reminded me of a Rhone, the delicious mineral and the firming tannins releasing the fruit elegantly. And paired with the bison – outstanding.

As I was finishing the food for serving, Steve opened the Chateauneuf du Pape. When the foil was removed, it was evident that some seepage had occurred, a rusty and crusty film on the cork. But the cork removed intact, and again, there was no scent of taint. And the first whiff from the bottle was sublime. This wine went through some dramatic changes, as well, during the meal. An early taste gave me a strong acid flavor around the edge of my tongue, almost effervescent in quality. The tannins were quite weak as well at the start. But soon this wine bloomed, the tannins getting quite firm giving the wine a strong finish that suited the bison and root vegetables beautifully. My favorite Rhone comes through again!

I’ll rate the Malbec a 9.5: the mineral quality was a delightful surprise, giving this wine some real terroir. While the Domaine du Pegau was delicious, I will rate this with a 9 because I know what this appellation is capable of.