Knowing that I would be eating steak on Friday, with a couple of friends over, I naturally sought out a bottle of red to complement the cow. However, with beer being my friends’ drink of choice, my 2007 Gouguenheim Malbec, from the Mendoza region in Argentina remained. That is until I finished up some physics, and decided to relax with some wine, with my roommate. I popped open this bottle and poured it about 30 minutes later. Immediately the alcohol was very pronounced. I mean, I was thinking grape flavored vodka, not wine. After vigorously swirling, enough of the alcohol blew off, to reveal a nice nose of plums and vanilla. The plum is a very sugary smelling, not jammy, but almost plum syrup smelling. I have no idea if this exists, but if it does, I imagine this wine would smell like it. A little tobacco adds a nice touch of depth to this wine. The wine has an appealing plum color to it as well. This does not appear to be a hugely extracted wine.
In the mouth, it comes across as more tart than I was anticipating, as the nose almost makes it seem sweet. The plum follows through in the mouth as well, but it seems to be picking up a raspberry component as well. Pepper and leather also are showing nicely in the mouth, and they seem to stick around for a while. This wine has good, but not great, tannnins, and a medium body mouthfeel. Overall, this is a pretty good sipping wine. The alcoholic heat is a bit unpleasant, but I suspect this would be less of an issue if the bottle were open longer. Regardless, it is a bit disconcerting as the wine is only 13.5%, hardly what I would call an alcoholic beast.
I guess in retrospect, I probably should have had this with the steak, as it seems to be more food oriented than some of the other wines I have had recently. With that said, this is a well made, solid wine, and I would definitely buy this again. And like the bottle of Las Colinas from a few days back, this wine also has a very nice, subdued, but attractive packaging. Australia should take note! 84 pts, and I think for $13, not a terrible play. However, off the top of my head, the 2006 Calcu Red Wine beats this, and is $2 less.
-Matt
