Winemaker Notes
Inky purple-colored, expressive perfume of cedar, tobacco, violets, lilacs, black cherry, and blackberry which leap from the glass. This is followed by a spicy, full-flavored, layered, structured palate. With terrific length and balance, this should cellar through 2025.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
A very dark, rich style, with braised fig, bittersweet cocoa, coffee, plum reduction and loam notes that are woven together as they rumble through the muscular finish. Malbec. Best from 2010 through 2013.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2004 Malbec Familia Reserva was sourced from two Mendoza vineyards, one 56 years old and the other 66 years of age. The wine was fermented with native yeasts and aged for 20 months in French oak. Inky purple-colored, it offers an expressive perfume of cedar, tobacco, violets, lilacs, black cherry, and blackberry which leaps from the glass. This is followed by a spicy, full-flavored, layered, structured wine with 6-8 years of aging potential, excellent balance, and a lengthy, pure finish. It should drink well through 2025.
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.