Snooth Panel Tasting Program takes on Argentine Malbec

posted by Gregory in Snooth, Wine Industry, Wine

This past weekend I inaugurated Snooth’s Panel Tasting Program with a line-up of value driven Argentine Malbec. For this first test drive we proceeded in a very casual manner as we all got to know one and other and each person’s tasting style and speed.

I chose the theme and wanted to focus on Argentine Malbec for several reasons. Primary among them is the fact that times are getting tough and people want to know where to turn for value. It is undeniable that there are some compelling values among the wines sampled. The second point of the tasting was to take the pulse of Argentine Malbec.

There has been a virtual explosion in producer available here in the US market. The quality of these wines has never been higher and they are poised to break through in a significant way. Malbec is or will be the “hot” grape of 2008-2010. It was time to take a look at both the state of the grape in Argentina as well as the state of winemaking.

Malbec has a long and storied history in Argentina where it has produced some exceptional wines. Many of the producers now appearing on the US market are relative new comers to the game though they are blessed with many old-vine vineyards to source their fruit from. I was curious to see which path these newer winemakers are following to success, the full throttle, full extraction paradigm popular with jaded critics or something less in your face and  more suitable for the dining table. Perhaps something more representative of the grape, region and history of Argentine viticulture. The results speak for themselves!

Participants in today’s tasting

Stephanie Moreno – Sales Manager Astor Wines & Spirits
Beth Cotenoff – Vice President Cornerstone Communications
Renee Mack – Healthcare Professional
Leonardo Commercio – Manager Vintage Grape NYC
Ryan Hodges – Manager Park East Wines & Spirits.
Gregory Dal Piaz – Community Manager  Snooth

11th Place
2006 San Polo Auka 14.1% Mendoza - $13.00
It was tough for anyone to find anything nice to say about this wine. Stephanie found  “calamine lotion” on the nose. Beth felt it was “burnt and rubbery” while Leo was feeling charitable with “Chartreuse” . The group’s overall assessment was captured by Renee who summed the wine up as “burnt rubber, horrible”. I was alone in  liking this wine, thinking it very much in line with what people want and expect from malbec. Modern, flashy and obviously oaky, it’s not something I’d buy for myself but I know many people who would enjoy this.

10th Place
2007 Finca Flichman 13.5% Mendoza $9.00
This bottling proudly proclaimed it’s 3 months of barrel ageing on the labels but, unfortunately, that overt and clumsy woodiness turned off both Beth who “hated it” and Leo who found both the nose and palate dominated by
“charcoal and rocks”. Stephanie found the nose an improvement with “more intense floral and spice notes”. I also found the nose to be intensely floral and the best feature of the wine.

9th Place
2006 Luigi Bosca Finca La Linda 14% Mendoza $10.00
This sort of slid under the radar with nothing good said about but nothing bad either. It was “fine but boring” according to Beth though Ryan felt it was a “disappointing example” of malbec. I’d have to concur there, decent and acceptable but nothing more.

8th Place
2006 Budini Malbec 13.5% Mendoza $9.00
This was the wine that saw the most divergent opinions among the group. It was the only screw-top finished bottle as well. Coincidence? Leo Loved the “great nose, with fruit, spice, and tar”. That sentiment was not shared by Stephanie who felt the wine was “lean and green”  or Renee who characterized the wines texture and flavor as “Watered down”.  Again I was in the minority with this wine which I felt was light and fresh, a distinct departure from what Malbec usually is but a fine, simple table wine.

7th Place
2006 Navarro Correas Coleccion Privada 14% Mendoza $10.00
With this wine we step across an imaginary line into “big” wines. This certainly packed a big punch with “lots of blueberry” as Beth put it. “We getting big, jammy and hot, but I like it!” was Leo’s take on it and while Ryan felt that the “nose is much better than the palate, a little more rustic on the nose” my opinion mirrored that of the groups. that this was a big wine with lots of fruit but lacking a bit of liveliness and freshness.

6th Place
2005 Punto Final Reserva 14.7% Mendoza $16.00
If the last wine was hot this was on fire! Renee characterized it as “nondescript but I still liked this, it was almost my third best” and Leo felt it was “what people think of when they think of Malbec” but neither Beth nor Stephanie enjoyed the wine, both finding it hot and Stephanie would have expected” the added year in bottle to have mellowed out some of these harsh tannins, it’s just not balanced. I concur,  for me this was a disaster in a bottle overblown alcohol and bitter extracted tannins + vinous mess.

5th Place
2006 Lamadrid Reserve 14.5% Mendoza $15.00
This was an interesting style of wine. It is a classic “fruit bomb” that Leo found to be “clean juicy and round” though Renee commented on the “quite a warm finish, actually pretty hot” which is what I found as well. It was both juicy and hot! As big a fruit bomb as we had in this line-up and if that’s your style this might be a winner for you.

4th Place
2006 Sur de los Andes Reserva 13.9% Mendoza $12.00
I think everyone was impressed with this bottling. Just as with the Navarro Correas there was a jump up in quality with this wine. Stephanie found it to be” very pretty and full of blueberries” while Leo thought it to be “A bit fleshy but also a bit ashy and glue-like, reminds me of pinotage”, which was a refreshing change from all the Malbec that had spoken so loudly of Malbec. Ryan felt this was a” sure crowd pleaser”, a sentiment shared by Renee who found the wine “Enjoyable and made in an easy drinking style”.  I can’t add much, to me this smelled expensive and was a well balanced richly fruited winner!

3rd Place
2006 Familia Schroeder Saurus 14% Patagonia $16.00
Here was the only outlier of the group, A Patagonian Malbec, was it much of a departure from the Mendozan examples? Yes and no, it was made an a more elegant style than the wines that had preceded it with great aromatics of “sweet cinnamon and a little bit of funk” according to Beth, though Leo found too much of a “rubber-band” note on the nose to truly enjoy it. Ryan was intrigued by the cool aromatics of “Tar quality and black fruit”. I enjoyed this wine and I found it interesting that most of the comments regarding it were both positive and about the wine’s nose.

2nd Place
2005 Luigi Bosca Lujan de Cuyo 14.5% Mendoza $16.00
This was an almost exotic wine and was the wine that showed the most evolution over the course of the tasting. Initially the nose was rich in”soft cocoa powder and waxy fruit” according to Stephanie, there was array of notes “interesting aromas from violets to barnyard” as renee put it. Beth sussed out further nuances of  RM “white pepper and chocolate” and then went on the capture the quality that really set this apart” it’s rich but not jammy” as she said and I could not agree more. This is a wonderful wine that melds intensity of flavor and complexity with elegance and nuance. Really an “old world” example of Argentine Malbec and slightly reminiscent of the famous 1977 Weinert Estrella that remains the benchmark for the region.

1st Place
2007 Achaval-Ferrer 13.5% Mendoza $20.00
This very nearly unanimously chosen as the first place wine. It is as pure a wine as one is likely to find from Malbec with “rich blueberries on the palate” as renee put it. Ryan felt this was “Just what you expect when you open Malbec” and Beth characterized the wine as “earthy and leathery with an animally edge and approachable sweet tannins” Both Renee and Stephanie enjoyed the wines bright, friendly character.  For me the complexity of the Luigi Bosca just barely edged this out for first but the liveliness of this wine in the mouth and it’s fine balance make it a winner for sure.

Well that was it. There certainly are many fine examples of Argentine Malbec under $20 and while there seems to be a bit of a price quality corollary here there are wines at $15 or under that can play with the big boys. These are fine, interesting wines and Malbec really has found the right place to express itself in Argentina. As Ryan put it these wines are successful since these are the perfect “New wine drinker wine,affordable,approachable with nothing to be intimidated by”. I was surprised by several of these wines, my notes can be found in the GDP on Wine Forum.

Next up on the agenda: Zinfandel. If you are interested in joining the Snooth Panel Tasting Program please shoot me an email. I am always looking for new members to join in these fun and informative events!  Gregory@Snooth.com

Gregory Dal Piaz is the Community Manager at  Snooth, an avid Wine Geek with a passion for things Italian, and a long suffering Mets fan.  

The sky is falling! What are we to do?

posted by Gregory in Wine Industry, Wine, Guest Bloggers

These are serious times for the world. Our economy is under severe pressure that few of us have ever seen before and they are taking their toll on the world of wine. Large collections of recently acquired wines are being hastily brought to auction to create some liquidity for those heavily invested in this “liquid asset” and the effect on the wine world will be interesting to watch.

Many factors will come into play here, the first being the aforementioned saturation of the auction market, which has already begun. The sheer volume of wine purchased over the past few of years of wealth accumulation is staggering. Far more wine than would ever be consumed was socked away in ever fancier and ever larger custom wine cellars. Just for illustrative purposes the wine cellaring business, which had been about a $15 million business a decade ago grew to an $800 million business last year! The explosive growth of MacMansions with the obligatory wine room helped to fuel this competitive buying binge as keeping up with the Joneses could now be measure on yet another scale, the opulent and extravagant wine collection.

The majority of what was purchased to fill these cellars were the fine wines of Bordeaux, in particular the first and so-called super-second growths, though with a pronounced effect throughout the sector. Wines that had languished on the shelves for $200 are now $1,000. The demand for these wines was overwhelming and came not only from domestic consumers but the emerging markets of both China, and to a lesser extent, Russia.

Bordeaux is a strange beast in many ways, it is unique in that it has long been a commoditized wine. The auction markets have always been dominated by Bordeaux and the large production of the Chateaux, typically over 20,000 cases per year, ensured that there was enough liquidity in those markets to truly allow the market to set the price of these wines. In fact the famous, or infamous depending on your point of view, Bordeaux classification of 1855, establishing the strata still in evidence today, was based apon the relative pricing of each Chateaux at the time.

Interestingly the phenomenon of global warming and technological advances in winemaking have played an integral part in the run-up of prices and can only exacerbate the pending collapse. In the past Bordeaux, like most fine wine regions, was blessed with a few great vintages a decade. The warming climate and the improved ability to deal with challenging vintages has introduced a new paradigm. In the 1990’s both 91 and 92 were pretty dismal vintages but things picked up with good vintages in both 93 and 94, then excellent vintages in 95 and 96, with a slip in 97 that very nearly undid the Bordeaux trade as a crappy vintage met the ill-timed introduction of the new Bordelaise pricing policy, onward and upward! 1998 was a solid vintage, then came 1999, a pretty vintage that in the past may have been barely acceptable but modern know-how saved the day and the exceptionally powerful dollar brought the wines to market at very attractive pricing, a fine introduction to Bordeaux, but then everything went wrong.

2000, the millennial vintage, the first “Vintage of the Century!” of the new century, conveniently ignoring the reality that it was in fact the last “Vintage of the Century!” of the last century. Then 2001 very good, 2002 classic and well priced, 2003 an aberration of a vintage suffering from the sweltering heat of the season but greeted enthusiastically by the critics who thought that the exoticism of the wines was something to fawn over. Why one would want Bordeaux to resemble over-ripe California Cabernet is beyond me, but the hyperbole approached another ‘Vintage of the Century!” call. 2004 was again a vintage that was fine and solid in a classic style if more expensive than the preceding vintage. And then came 2005, “Vintage of the Century!” yet again and at price increases never before seen. “Buy before they become even more expensive” was the rallying call and while interest was huge, purchasing follow through lagged a bit. That is until the Bordelaise pricing model kicked in with the less impressive 2006’s that were priced above the “VotC” 2005s! In New York they call that Chutzpah.

Well if did not stop there and 2007 Bordeaux prices were released just in time to coincide with the meltdown of global markets. This adequate vintage is priced at or around the price of the better 2006s, converting them into yet another screaming buy! So there they are, a plethora of vintages worthy of one’s cellar, some to drink in the short-term and some to cellar so that our grandchildren can enjoy the finest wines of our nascent century. Cellars are full to bursting, the retail pipeline is full to bursting, winemakers’ cellars are full to bursting, and then the world’s economy decided to implode. So where does that leave us and does this all have a point?

Yes and no. Some of this is just my venting, well only a little bit actually. The point is that for all you Bordeaux fans who have been priced out of the market recently salvation is coming. After last week’s collapse on Wall Street a bit of panic selling spread to the fine wine market. Million of dollars worth of wine have been proposed to auction houses and retailers around the globe in just the past week, and that is only the beginning. The effect of this surge in supply has yet to be felt in the marketplace and the auction channels are keeping their fingers crossed that the Asian markets will sop it all up due to their pent-up demand, but our Asian brothers are not dumb. The super rare wines may hold their value or continue to rise due to their illiquid markets but the sheer volume of Bordeaux that is about to come to market almost guarantees significant price reductions, This may take some time to filter through as auction houses modify their policies to keep hammer prices afloat. By reducing their cut from both the buyer and the seller an auction house can keep hammer prices, the final bid proposed by a buyer, level while real pricing, the hammer price plus the cut or buyer’s premium, usually 15-20% tacked on by the auction house, falls.

This is tricky business yet only postpones the inevitable, wine prices, and Bordeaux prices in particular, though there is little hope that the bloated and obnoxious pricing of much of California’s Cabernet will retain their buoyancy, are set to re-adjust in synch with the grand asset devaluation that is sweeping the globe. France is already bracing for a precipitous drop in wine exports, led by the backed up flow of forsaken Bordeaux. Restaurants are dealing with a nation-wide drop in business and are already seeing consumers switch from the super-premium labels so popular over the past few years to more value driven selections.

So they bottom line, and thankfully we are almost at the bottom line here, is that wine prices will suffer a retreat that will once again allow everyone to share in the bounty. For too many years too much wine had fallen into the exclusive domain of the rich. That was not only wrong but it was a shame, something that is lacking in the wine business. This foodstuff, a simple beverage designed to make life a little more pleasant, was elevated to the level of status symbol comparable to Tiffany, Rolex, or Hermes. If you don’t believe that wait for my blog about the problem with counterfeit wines! Well that time is coming to an end, it took a tortuously painful worldwide financial crisis to facilitate it but the long-term prognosis for wine lovers is improving! Keep tuned into the Snooth wine talk pages as I embark on a set of articles that will focus on value wine, wines to drink while we wait for the fine wine market to establish a new, reasonable, affordable pricing structure.Of course some of these value wines are so damn good you may very well feel that there is no reason to pay more for wine, but that is fodder for another discussion.

Gregory Dal Piaz is the Community Manager at  Snooth, an avid Wine Geek with a passion for things Italian, and a long suffering Mets fan. 

Hello and a bit of an introduction!

posted by Gregory in Snooth, Wine

So I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the New Community Manager here at Snooth. I have been a passionate wino for over 2 decades and am really excited to be starting out on this project with such a fine group of people.

I’ll be wearing many hats, you’ll be seeing a lot of me in the Forums, especially Wine Talk were I’ll be sharing many of my notes until I get a place to call my own, and in Food and Wine where I will use my 16 years experience as a chef to try and help on all sorts of food and wine questions.

In addition I’ll be working hard behind the scenes, finding great new wines for you to try, organizing exciting Snooth winetastings and dinners, and scouring the web for great deals from our retailing partners that I can pass on to you!

Just to give you an idea of some of the great events I am planning for this fall here are a few: a 1998 Barolo 10 year after retrospective dinner, Vertical tastings of Caymus, Burgess, And Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernets from one of California’s golden ages, the late 1970’s to early 80’s, and a vertical Tasting of Trentinos San Leonardo with Proprietor Marchese Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga. In addition there will be plenty of blind panel tastings focusing on hot wines such as California Pinot Noir, Syrah of the world and, of course my favorite, Nebbiolo that will include members of the trade and a few lucky Snoothites to boot!

Just to give you a bit of information about my wine loves so that you can better judge what I will be writing about I have an Italophile palate! When I was a child, seems like yesterday, I spent all of my summers growing up on a farm in Northern Italy, Trentino to be exact. I have a soft spot for the acid driven, lean style of wines that recall the wines of my youth and am naturally driven the wines from that most noble grape Nebbiolo.

On the other hand I have an open mind and enjoy a broad range of wines but have on my short list of “today’s problems with wines”; too much alcohol, too much toasty oak, too much manipulation, and, well that’s the short list.  I love wines that taste different as opposed to wines that taste alike. I am fundamentally against many of the so-called “flying winemaker” types of wines that speak more of the winemaker than of the grape and place. I can totally get into a big, even clumsy Zin with a hunk of charred meat just as easily as I can fawn over a mature Barolo with a simple plate of Tagliarini and White truffle. Wines are like shoes, sandals in the summer, boots in the winter and it all makes sense. That’s a rambling thought now isn’t it?

Anyway I leave you with a photo from last Sunday, which makes me a long suffering Mets fan, and a pair of links to two of my favorite wines. I hope to be seeing more of all of you in the coming months as we grow the Snooth Community together. If you would like to be notified about future Snooth events please sign on and make yourself a member.  Invite me to be your friend and you’ll be included in all future invites.

2004 Marcarini La Serra Barolo

 2005 Saxon Brown Flora Ranch Syrah

Happy Hunting!

Gregory Dal Piaz is the Community Manager at  Snooth.com, an avid Wine Geek with a passion for things Italian, and a long suffering Mets fan.