…my country socked your country right in the nose.
What color was the blood?
Malbec.

I didn’t have time to write about this before I left for Paris…

I just laugh at the prices people pay for California and Washington wines. Even just a $15 California supermarket Cabernet. Why do I laugh? Because anything California and Washington can do, Chile and Argentina can do cheaper. It’s a simple postulation of real estate valuation.

(A house in Napa =’s 10 x a house in Argentina)

Argentinian winery Dona Paula OWNS about 2000 acres of mostly very mature vines, at very high altitudes in the Mendoza region. This is different from most budget wines because… GENERALIZATION ALERT: 1) Owning vines cuts out middle men, keeps costs lower. 2) Older vines make better wines–complexity comes with age, just like people. Nobody wants to drink a teenager. Blech. 3) Higher altitudes keep from over-cropping and too sugary grapes, maintain acidity. To over-simplify a textbook’s worth of info, marginal climates have the ability to make better wines. (CA central valley bad, CA central coast good).

Stefano Gandolini, the winemaker of Dona Paula and their sister label Los Cardos, expertly coaxes very balanced, rich/light wines, at every price point. He has worked in Tuscany and Bordeaux. Bordeaux is a plus for obvious reasons. But I think his experience in Tuscany, with the Sangiovese grape is most evident in these reds.

See, Malbec is endlessly compared to Cabernet Sauvignon, but that’s not quite right. When you tastes a lot of Malbecs together, it becomes very clear how different the grape is from Cab. Cabernet is a wood instrument, and Malbec and Sangiovese are strings. Malbec has an acidity and way more red fruit character. So someone who knows how to treat Sangiovese right most definitely can play Malbec like a violin. And Gondolini does.

I know this might sound like hyperbole, but I sold some of these wines for years. I’m sad I wasn’t exposed to the full range before. Usually, when you have a company that has tiers of wines at different price points like this, there’s maybe one clear winner per label. (Australia’s Oxford Landing comes to mind. I always recommend that label, but the grape I recommend changes from year to year, only one is ever worthy.)

But to sit down and taste a medium rich, apply crisp, clean Chardonnay…followed by a tangy, cherry red, juicy Malbec that manages to fire off every lovely requirement of said grape (NERD ALERT: acidity, minty/herbal aroma, intense mid-palate fruit) … followed by the bestest, cheapest, drinking-while-I’m-eatingest Cabernet Sauvignon I’ve had in at least a year…made me very happy. And that was just the Los Cardos label, what’s considered their entry level. And they are all $8.00 or less, dpeending on where you live.

So entry level? OK, I’m in. What the hell’s next? I’m wondering whether I should really tell this guy how good the wine is…I don’t want him to raise the prices.

This is exactly the kind of tip you’d benefit from if you make an effort to be a frequent customer at your local wine shop. See, the guy that buys a $60 to $100 case of wine a month means $720 to $1200 a year in sales. The trophy trolling guy that only occasionally comes in for an expensive, penis-boosting Cabernet spends less and is worth less, to me. Don’t ever feel intimidated because you spend less. By giving you good recs, and gaining your repeat business, the wine shop that courts the everyday wine customer pays the rent and their taxes. Courting the insecure only makes the books less secure.