The Best New Wines from Argentina

In my extensive tastings of well over 600 Argentine wines in recent months, nearly half of the bottles I tried were malbec or mostly malbec. I discovered superb values in every price range, although it must be said that the range of quality and styles was mindboggling. At one end of the spectrum, there’s plenty of insipid, rustic, overripe or downright flawed wine on the market. And at the other extreme, numerous good but expensive flagship bottlings do not justify their price tags in today’s more cost-sensitive market. With consumers balking at paying $50 or more for Châteauneuf du Pape or California cabernet in a difficult economic environment, how many drinkers will be willing to fork over that much for malbec from Argentina? Happily, one can also find some classy, structured, ageworthy red wines that are fairly priced at that level.

A few observations from my tastings this year. Recent vintages in Argentina have been conducive to making excellent wine. Vintages 2007, 2006 and 2005 were all at least very good, and all three years have yielded many outstanding red wines. Of those three vintages, I have found quality to be most variable in 2006: even some pricey items showed evidence of quick or uneven ripening. In some wines, grape sugars may have galloped ahead of true phenolic maturity. The result is frequently a liqueur-like or stewed-fruit character, or even an overripe/underripe quality in some bottlings. While some ’06s are quite expressive in their youth, they seem to lack the depth and balance of the other recent vintages.