Posted by Father Tony
I'm in the supermarket looking for a good red (near a label-studying porn star and his friend, incidentally) when I spied this $17 bottle of American malbec. That's more than I ordinarily pay for malbec but I wanted to compare the California and Argentina versions. (We first developed an affection for malbec while vacationing in Buenos Aires.)
Malbec is a powerful, big-mouthed jammy wine, rather like shiraz, I think. Drinking malbec is like having Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in bed.
My opinion of the Coppola malbec and my recommendation for an excellent (and only $11!) malbec after the jump.
I found the Copolla malbec to be softer and more compliant than many of the Argentinian ones. More like having Matt Damon in bed. I wondered if I prefer the rougher reds. The Penfolds shiraz mourvedre, for example, is like having Hugh Jackman in bed. The Italian Canonnau de Sardegna, for example, is like having Sylvester Stallone in bed.
My highest recommendation for a malbec is the Diseno 2006 Mendoza malbec. It has a brightness and a smiling seduction that is absent from many of the others. Like having Antonio Banderas in bed. A bargain at $11.
I have Jeff out hunting the 2006 Diseno as we speak.
ReplyDeleteI've been a confirmed Shirz/Syrah lover for some time but I have to say I'll go with a Malbec any chance I get.
If you enjoy Argentine malbecs (and I do too), try French reds from the region of Cahors. They'll be made from at least a large majority of the malbec grape, with perhaps small percentages of merlot and tannat. Malbec originated in Cahors, even though it's the Argentineans who've made a name for it. Because of that success, some Cahors winemakers are starting to put the name of the grape prominently on their labels. They're deciding it's better to flout French wine-naming convention than to continue producing a wine many Americans don't know about but might try if they learned it's a malbec under a different name. I found the 2006 Clos La Coutale Cahors Table Wine, which I wrote about on Hawleyblog ( http://hawley.blogs.com/hawleyblog/2009/05/next-wine-post.html ) , to be subtly beautiful and enchanting. Like having Clive Owen in bed after he's smoked some weed.
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