Lust, pain and Malbec
April 30, 2008
October 2009 Update: My last visit to Firefly Fine Wines and Ales saw a $16.10 price tag on this bottle — oh happy day! Now if they could just keep it in stock…
August 2009 Update: This Malbec just dropped to $19.25 at Firefly Fine Wines and Ales. I’m so excited!!
Perdriel Punto Final Malbec‘s dark berry, cherry, tobacco nose also has hints of vanilla. It’s a generous, masculine mouthful that will leave you with a black-toothed smile of guilty pleasure. This wine will get your engines roaring.
After tasting this delicious Malbec from Argentina it became my mission to find another bottle at a lower price. It’s not that it’s insanely expensive at $21.30, but finding a delicious wine for under $20 is always my ambition. There’s five weekday dinners and only two weekend ones, right?
“Leave me alone with this one and black out the room…”
Using my best logic, I marched back to the liquor store and found myself another Malbec. Pascual Toso Malbec is also from the Mendoza area in Argentina, but it’s around $13. Same area, same country, same grape — how can the taste be that different, right? Wrong! The lovely aromas of dark cherries that hooked me on the Punto Final were replaced with paint chips, kerosene and perhaps a hint of dry-erase marker in the Pascual Toso. At first sip you get a peppery pang, then bring on the bitter. The finish is just an awful wrong-doing to your tongue that made me recoil and shiver with regret.
If cheap and rough is your fancy, you’ve found your wine.
Never one to admit defeat (or quickly learn a lesson), I made another attempt with La Chamiza Polo Amateur Malbec. From the same Mendoza area of Argentina, but this one is about $12.
It’s fairly purple in the glass and it’s got a boozy-bouquet at first, which becomes less harsh if you decant it, but never goes away.
If you don’t let this one breathe for a while it’ll burn all the way down and leave you with cotton-mouth.
If you have time to let it breathe, you’ve found an average table wine. But don’t serve it to guests.
Okanagan Spring Wine Festival
April 30, 2008
Can there be a better weekend getaway than driving East and tasting the new Okanagan releases? It’s hard to imagine. Stay tuned for stories of how the weekend trip played out.
