After a thrilling all-day busride over the Andes, Peter and I reunited and spent the weekend in Mendoza, Argentina, enjoying the meat and Malbec. First up was a really elegant Angelica Zapata 2004 Malbec, a product of the successful Bodega Catena Zapata. Bright fruit with balanced alcohol and acidity made this a treat both with and without the meat.
At a visit to Achaval Ferrer, one of the top Malbec producers, I learned about their very interesting way of de-alcoholizing their wine. They said because of the heat their Malbec gets super ripe and can get up to 17-18% alcohol, which is too high, so to bring it down to a more reasonable 13-14% they have fans blowing over the juice as it is fermenting, helping to evaporate the alcohol. This is fascinating to me. Their yields are very low to concentrate the flavors in the grapes, which explains why the vines looked so sparse as we were driving in - only a few bunches per plant. We also learned that you should age your wine without the foil capsule on it so you can see how the cork is holding up. If you see that you have a leaky cork, better drink the wine!
We tasted one of Achaval Ferrer's single vineyard Malbecs, Finca Bella Vista, from 2007. This wine goes for over $100 a bottle in the US. It was super concentrated with flavors of blackberry and licorice. They also had a nice blend called Quimera (also 2007) that was Malbec, Merlot, Cab Sauv and Cab Franc. It had a lot of bright red fruit and good structure.
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