Snuggle up for a Winter Wine Friday!

It was a good week to stay inside and drink some wine from the cellar but I did also make it to the wine shop earlier in the week.

Malbec madness continues. Everyone is crazy for Malbec like Snookie for clothes that don't fit and vodka on a Wednesday night.

Malbec is hot like Natalie Portman's career right now.

Digression: I have always thought Natalie Portman was smoking hot but it seems like everyone else is figuring it out all at once. I tweeted about a month ago that this will the year of Natalie Portman. It will be. She looks like fun but if you read her Wiki you'll find we don't have much in common other than we are both really smart people! At least wine is acceptable to her vegan lifestyle...... Let's see I'd have to give up meat, leather shoes, become a Jew, support Democrats to have a chance........ way too hard. Sometimes better just to admire from afar.

Anyway, back to Malbec. For the most part affordable. Fat, juicy, rich, firm tannins are a recipe irresistible to most red wine lovers.

So, I've been drinking quite a few and the Alamos Seleccion Malbec is my favorite for this week. I'm sure you are mostly familiar with the regular bottling from Alamos if you like Malbec from Argentina at all. It is probably the most popular winery from that country and is in wide distribution. The Seleccion would be considered their reserve bottling and it is far and away a different bottle of wine. This is Peyton Manning compared to Eli Manning. Same family completely different player. This wine is much bigger and richer than the regular bottling. It shows Blackberry and Blueberry with some dark mocha flavors and just a little leather and for me the signature "meaty" quality I find in good Malbec. It also exhibits pretty hints of violet. It is rich and voluptuous and the tannins are nice, not too bitter but pleasingly integrated and long. The wine finishes long. Finally, at the end of the bottle as I'm squeezing out the last little bit I notice something that always pleases me just a little bit. Sediment. While wine doesn't have to have it to be good I've often noticed in many bottles of red, even younger big reds, that I've really enjoyed that it isn't unusual to see a little sediment in that last glass. It tells me that the wine hasn't been over processed. Not over filtered. I like to see this. I like to see this especially on a fine at this price.

This is a Malbec worth seeking out. At $15 it is a real bargain. I mean a great buy. I'm sure it gets regularly overlooked by premium Malbec buyers because they associate the less expensive regular bottling with the name. Don't make that mistake. This stuff rocks and is worth seeking out. I found it at Lukas.

I drank this while watching movie night with the kids and while it certainly went down all too well that way it made me really made me wish for a slow roasted pork shank or a hearty beef stew.

Enjoy and Vaya Con Dios!