Tea! And Fruit! But Mainly Tea!

And I don't particularly mean that the wine smells tannic. Rather it has the fragrance of tea, some sort of dark leafiness. Then there is some more leafiness, of the tobacco sort, and then interestingly, braised red cabbage, and then finally a bit of smoke.

By contrast the palate has lots of bright fruit, and indeed it isn't all that tannic. It's fresh and medium bodied (viz, that means light for a Malbec), and really rather tasty.

My good friend TallAsAVan, Malbecista Supremo, observes that Malbec always says blue fruit to him, which I don't find. What I do often find is fishy. I've never even seen one, but that sort of dried fish called Bombay Duck (Why is it called Bombay Duck? It's been around too long to blame the name on Google Translate. Perhaps it's another case of Your Finger You Fool?) often pops into my head on tasting the bigger, more full bodied kinds of Malbec.

So it is an interesting change to find this lighter example of the grape. Well done chaps.

(Whoops – the details: Viu Manent Malbec 2007, Colchagua Valley, Chile, 14%, £7 from Oddbins. really rather tasty = 3++)

Château La Roche '04

Château Lauduc is a forty hectare property just to the east of the city of Bordeaux, in Entre-Deux-Mers. Confusingly, one of their reserve wines is called Château La Roche (perhaps it alludes to some historical whatnot?). La Roche comes from just one hectare of the vineyard, and rather unusually for Bordeaux these days, it is half Malbec, half Merlot.

It's a tasty , light, juicy mouthful, not too fruity, but rather earthy and very claret-y, if that's useful. But it didn't call to mind any Malbec characteristics at all, nor Merlot. One of those wines where the whole is decidedly more than the sum of the parts. And a very, very good match for the Beetroot, Orange and Chocolate soup I made. Château La Roche Première Côtes de Bordeaux ('04, cork), very good (3++).

Well I Never

Mendel Malbec ('06, under a rather decent cork), was a revelation. My mental shorthand for Malbec says “beefy bruiser”, but these guys have taken it to places entirely new to me. Light in body (all things are relative, of course: for an Argentinian Malbec it seems light to me, but on an absolute scale of Moscato d'Asti to freshly fermented Madiran, it is up there with the garagiste Bordelais), it still has the tannins one would want to accompany roast beast, and is a-swirl with all sorts of interesting flavours – green peppercorn, dried fruit, chocolate, savoury stews – that kept me sniffing for ages. Decidedly excellent, 4.

Oops! I seem to have opened next year's bottle…

The theme for tonight's World of Wine tasting was balance, so of course we had to have some wines which are out of wack somehow or other. An easy call is a young wine from tannic grapes, especially one which is super-extracted: the kind of bottle which still needs a few months or a couple of years to let the tannins calm down. The Sur de los Andes Winemaker's Selection Malbec ('05, cork) is just the thing, with the added advantage of having loads of interesting flavours to it.

When I opened it I wondered if it was faulty, since it seemed to smell of fish food, but then two of my fellow tasters found similar aromas (seaweed, fish). My note also says, "inky", and "octopus", but then it also says "spice", "gingerbread", and "Yeehaw!".

It scores 4+, excellent. If I have the willpower, I expect it might turn into a five-pointer by 02009.

Exploding Plums and Chocolate Shrapnel

This time it's Colomé Estate ('04, cork). A big, dark, plummy blend of two thirds Malbec, a fifth Cabernet Sauvignon, and some Tannat from the Salta province of Northern Argentina. I was impressed by its claim to be from "The highest vineyard in the World", but Puddleglum assures me that all Argentinian wines have this on the label. The wine is very concentrated, dry, warming, and satisfying. It seems complex, too (my tasting note mentions herbs, barley sugar and blackcurrants), and has a long finish. A very good 16++(?17)/20.

There are two points to note here. My first impression of the wine was, "Whoah! Fruit bomb! Hee-hee!", but that's such a tired description, hence this blog's title, which conveys something of the attention-grabbing nature of the wine, and also tells you a little about the flavours. There was an anonymous comment on the previous post about how we describe wines, but I did detect the hand of TallAsAVan, who once characterised a poor Argentinian Malbec as being "like the dissonant clatter of a filing cabinet falling down some stairs". Perhaps he might think of Colomé Estate as an October storm rushing through a beech copse high on the Downs; powerful, exhilarating, exciting.

Second point: scoring. What exactly does 16++(?17) mean? Mainly it reflects my inability to settle on a single number, but that isn't very satisfactory. This year I am resolved to improve my wine scoring system. Along the way I may well try out Parker-style scoring, a star rating, or anything else which is suggested to me. In the meantime, have a look at this radical new scoring system.