MY TOP 25: PREMIUM ARGENTINIAN MALBEC
Today’s southern hemisphere is full of exciting combinations of variety and location for the wine lover to enjoy. Thirty years ago, that wasn’t true. I’m not going to list those combinations (you’ll each have your own favourites) but want to underline that it is so – and that, in being so, it means we have reached base camp for the exploration of southern hemisphere wine terroirs over the next several hundred years. Terroir wine is not the only sort of wine, but it’s the sort which provides more profound pleasure than any other. It’s born when an ideally adapted grape variety or set of varieties is planted in a distinguished site.
My own favourite combination of those identified so far is Malbec grown in high-altitude sites in the Andes, principally – though not exclusively – in Argentina. Why? Three reasons. These wines’ singular drama is the first. Their dark, lustrous vivacity has a shocking beauty. They imitate nothing. The best constitute striking new landmarks in the world’s wine landscape.
Structure is the second. If southern hemisphere red wines share a failing, it’s that their fruit hasn’t yet been able to deliver the structural authority of the greatest red wines of Bordeaux, of Tuscany, of Piedmont, of the Rhône. This has nothing to do with oak, and everything to do with what is in the grape skins, how
