This simple entry-level Malbec carries warm black fruits, roasted coffee and a kiss of violet florals to a short finish. Tannins are a touch powdery but primed to meet your grilled root veg or ground beef dishes.
This big, brooding Tannat benefits from airtime, so decant or open well in advance (I went for a full day). Wild blackberry, black cherry, inky plum cloak a juicy core, fired by sun-warmth and housed with sticky tannins. Pipe tobacco, espresso and purple florals tie this up, finishing with a wash of sea salts and kept afloat with a wave of blue-stone acidity. For all its potency and warming finish, this is a respectable 13.5 degrees.
Deep plum red. Robust nose of raspberry, roasted meat and oak. Full-bodied and fruity, featuring date and raisin flavours in good balance with the acidity and softening tannins. Will last another year or two.
A weighty Chardonnay which sees fruit and oak come together, creating a melange of peach, pineapple, melon, apple, vanilla, cream and spice. Very good length with minerality and acidity carrying the finale.
Bright straw in colour with a nose of apples enhanced by oak spice; medium-bodied and dry with apple and lemon flavours. Nicely balanced wine.
The fruit, as sweet and dusky as it ever was, is now pinched with a twinge of balsamic, which tightens, squeezes and lifts this bigger Amarone-style red. This is a blend of Malbec, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Bonarda. After harvest, the grapes were placed on drying racks outside, where wind and the elements dried the berries and concentrated the flavours and sugars. Grapes lost approximately 30% of their weight in this process. After wild yeast ferment and MLF in French oak barriques, this wine aged for 12 months in new French oak. Alberto Antonini consults on this project, one run by winemaker Pablo Sanchez.
Sourced from 90-year-old vines from the Don Angelino estate in Medrano, Mendoza, this dense Malbec is threaded with sunbaked red fruits and leather, as well as fine dusty spices, and bound by sticky tannins. Though the word “oak” is on the label, and this indeed spent 10 months in wood, it's barely noticeable in this wine, lending some much-needed boning to the velveteen, ripe and concentrated palate.