Ruca Malen - Malbec

Price: $18
Region: Argentina
Year: 2008

Maybe it is the glowing bottle of the wine I reviewed last night, but what ever the reason, I felt like sitting down and writing another review tonight. My wife and I had gone to a neighbors wine tasting event a few weeks back. A local distributor was present and had a good number of wines for us to try. Luckily, their house is right across the street :) Anyway, he was selling any of the wines we tasted at wholesale price. While this Malbec in particular retails for around $18, we ended up grabbing a couple of bottles for $8. A bargain for sure. Interesting enough, I had reviewed the first bottle we bough about two weeks back, but my wife and I shared the second bottle tonight. So, while the notes are a little old, the wine is definitely fresh in my mind.

The first thing you notice about this wine is that is it a very deep, dark red, almost purple wine. I'm not sure there is much not to like about a wine that looks like this. As bold as the color is, the aroma stands out just as much. I just get the sensation of lots and lots of berries. Really, just a great smelling wine. By this point I was really looking forward to a great tasting wine as well, and was hoping I wasn't going to be let down. Fortunately, it lived up to the billing. This wine had a great flavor, with excellent balance throughout, and wonderful tannis. There really wasn't a lot not to enjoy about this wine. You can find lots lots of nice Malbecs under $15, but for a couple of extra dollars, this one wine is definitely worth a try.

Rating: 4.0 corks (A very good wine!)