Malbec Matures in Argentina

by Ron Underwood

I was taking a sip of wine recently and it dawned on me that it was not a Carmenere from Chile, but rather it was a Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina that is. I used to get the two confused, but then I figured out a way to remember...

Malbec- Mendoza, and Carmenere - Chile. The two M's & the two C's. Okay, great...another general rule has been established.

Any exceptions to this rule?

Sure, but wine is built around the rules, not the exceptions.

Actually, a better general rule that’s worth remembering is how much the wines have improved in Argentina. I can even remember five years ago trying several Malbecs. They were heavy and very tannic. These days the quality of wines is much better, but the price per bottle is still about the same. You can get a great bottle for around fifteen to twenty five dollars.

I recently drank a bottle of the Mendoza Kono Baru, 2006 vintage. It has a deep red color. The bouquet is of roasted oak and raspberry. Although the wine is young, it is very drinkable now. It has a harmonious balance with a medium intensity ripe and rich consistency. The flavors are of black currant, blackberry and a touch of white pepper. Best of all, there is no trace of that barnyard essence Mendoza Malbecs became known for in the past.

So, why is Argentina getting better at producing red wine? Because Argentines love to eat meat. They consume what may be the most of any country in the world at around 150 lbs. per person every year, and Malbec goes great with red meat. Maybe that’s why Argentina has the most acreage of Malbec compared to anywhere else in the world.

Some History

It’s an interesting turn of events, actually, how Argentina got in the spotlight for producing wine from a grape (Malbec) that had only a supporting role in the great wines of Bordeaux, France. See, it all started because this Frenchman named Michel Pouget takes Malbec (or Cot, as it’s also called in France) to Argentina and plants it there in 1868. He helped to develop vineyards and European wine making methods there as well. Over the years, Malbec really began to take off, until the early eighties when Argentina had about 125,000 vineyard acres planted with the stuff.

But it’s not as though Argentina wine making started with Malbec and Pouget. The country has a rich wine making heritage going all the way back to the 1500’s with Spanish settlers bringing vines over with them. So, you see, the wine business is here to stay in Argentina.

Back in France, around the mid 1950’s, just as plantings of Malbec are really starting to flourish in Argentina, a heavy frost killed off three quarters of the Malbec in Bordeaux. This caused the grape to be used even less there as a blending varietal. You would think that this would be what gave Argentina the chance to claim it as their main varietal. However, by the 1980’s a vine-pull program was instituted to get the amount of the crop down from that massive 125,000 acre level. The program was very successful…too successful in fact! Malbec vineyards were reduced in Argentina to only 10,000 acres by around 1990.

It just so happens that wine exports from Argentina and South America would be on the steady rise all through the ‘90’s. The mature grapes that just got yanked out would have been perfect for making good wines to export around the world. Argentinian growers ended up replanting some of the Malbec which was just removed. Today, Malbec accounts for about 25,000 acres or so in Argentina. With the quality of wines being produced now, that’s sure to increase in the coming years.