2004 Malbec Felino

These wines, a partnership between husband-and-wife Luis Barraud and Andrea Marchiori and flying winemaker Paul Hobbs, have been made at Dolium since 2000, but Barraud and Marchiori are now building their own facility.The Cobos wines are made mostly in new French oak, although some of this operation's best malbec is aged in American barrels.Cobos owns 54 hectares of vines, including 24 planted to malbec and 15 to cabernet sauvignon.There are three ranges of wines:El Felino, Bramare and, at the top, Cobos.Andrea Marchiori told me that 2002 was the first great vintage for Cobos:2000 was marked by a big hailstorm, and a large rainstorm just prior to the 2001 harvest prevented the estate from making its top bottlings in that vintage.The growing season of 2003 featured a lot of very hot days in January and February, and at first the team preferred 2002."But with time in barrel we started to like the '03s," said Marchiori, "and now we find the wines better and more concentrated than '02."