Winemaker Notes
Accompaniment: Grilled red meat. Pasta and cheese. Perfect on all occasions.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2005 Monteviejo is a blend of 60% Malbec, 20% Syrah, 10% Merlot, and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon. It was aged for 16 months in new French oak. Inky purple, it offers aromas of toasty oak, espresso, mocha, black cherry and blueberry. On the palate it exhibits a smooth texture, layers of spicy blue and black fruit flavors, light tannin, excellent balance, and a 45-second finish. It will evolve for several years in the bottle but can be enjoyed now with a charcoal grilled Argentinian rib-eye.
Bodega Monteviejo, owned by Catherine Pere-Verge (also the proprietor of Pomerol’s Le Gay), is located at the foothills of the Andes, next to Vista Flores, south of Mendoza. The globe-trotting Michel Rolland is in charge of winemaking.
Most distinguished and celebrated from Argentina’s Mendoza, Malbec has seen runaway success since the early 2000s. Mendoza’s agreeable, continental climate with hot, dry summers and cold snowy winters allows the perfect conditions for growing outstanding Malbec. This grape is easy to like for its lusty, deep flavors and aromas of blackberry, plum, red cherry, autumn spice and tilled earth. It’s easy to find delicious, fruit-driven, affordable everyday examples and in prices beyond, quite exceptional ones with dense, supple textures that make them capable of aging.