Amy S.

whatiskevandrinking:

Doña Paula Estate Malbec (2010)

Wine? Yes, wine. This post serves as a birthday shout out to Amy over at Amy-Ess and her wonderful posts on both beer and wine. Her blog is great and she knows a TON about wine and challenged me to make a post about a wine, so happy birthday Amy! On to the wine, I chose a Malbec as when I do drink wine, I really like dark, earthy smokey red wines and Argentina is starting to produce some world class Malbec wines, so here we have the Doña Paula Estate Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina near the Chilean border. It has a really nice inky purple color, almost appears black when looking at it, but sports a really nice fuschia or magenta color around the edge of the glass. As I slosh it about the glass a bit, it does appear to look somewhat thin. The aroma is really bold, big dirty fruit notes, almost as if the grapes had been dragged around in the fields, notes of plum and dates, leather and a nice smokiness also pop out. The flavors are just as intriguing as the nose, nice dark grapes, not as dirty as the nose, a bit of plum, dark cherry, much more leathery than the nose with a nice smokey finish, very dry and bitter, but exceptionally smooth. The body is a bit thin for my liking, kind of adds a bit of wateriness to entire experience and detracts a bit from the bold, deep flavors.

Verdict: This is a pretty delicious wine, packs a nice fruit punch while remaining dry, earthy and pretty dirty, just how I like it. The smokey finish runs right into my wheelhouse, while the thinner mouthfeel is really my biggest complaint. At $14.99 a bottle, I’m not going to make a big stink about it as I will certainly enjoy drinking this throughout the week.

:D