Malbec (Mendoza)

Malbec (also called Côt in Cahors and Auxerrois in Bordeaux) was brought to Mendoza by the French agronomist Michel Pouget in 1853, at the request of Argentine President Domingo Sarmiento to modernise the country's viticulture. The 1853 frost that destroyed most of Cahors's Malbec plantings shortly after Pouget left France inadvertently saved the variety's existence through Argentina's continued cultivation.

Mendoza Malbec is the success story of modern winemaking — a grape that was a minor blending component in Bordeaux, nearly wiped out by frost in its Cahors homeland, and then transformed by the Argentine Andes into the world's most commercially successful red wine variety of the last three decades. Malbec in Mendoza benefits from the Andean altitude (800–1,500 metres above sea level), which provides cool nights that preserve acidity and freshness despite intense daytime sun, and the Andean foothills' alluvial soils that drain rapidly and force vine roots deep. The result is a wine of extraordinary colour saturation, generous plum and blueberry fruit, velvety tannin, and a distinctive violet floral note that Argentina's Malbec shares with no other expression of the variety.

FOOD PAIRING: Malbec's plum-violet-velvety-tannin profile is built for beef and empanadas. Provenance 1000 pairings: Argentine asado (the definitive pairing — Malbec was shaped by this dish), empanadas de carne (the flaky pastry with the plum fruit is harmonious), grilled lamb shoulder with chimichurri, short rib with mushroom jus, and Iberian charcuterie board.