When life delivers wine…

You drink it!  There are certainly drawbacks to being in the office until, say, 9pm.  Sure.  However, I can tell you there is hardly a  situation not improved with a bottle of wine.  Ergo, late in the evening, whilst hard at work, my coworker and I decided that wine would be a fun addition to the work at hand.  Going to GET wine wasn’t really an option- no local wine shop and hey, we had WORK to do!  Enter: foodler.com.  Enter: search term “wine.”  Enter: resounding shout of joy by julia, “WHAT?!  We can get wine delivered!” I was ecstatic when only 30 minutes later, I received a call that my Malbecs had arrived.  I didn’t want to waste this convenient situation on shoddy wine, so I picked bottles rated pretty well and were approximately $13 each because hey, even wine has a minimum for delivery.  Oh right… about the wine:

I ordered the 2009 Aqua de Piedra Malbec. I’m still researching the vineyard itself so a little background on Mendoza itself will have to suffice in the meantime... Argentina, and in particular, Mendoza, is quickly coming the hub  for some of the best Malbecs in the world. In the warm, but dry climate the grape near perfect ripeness endowing the wines with a typically rich, velvety texture and smooth, balanced and still intense flavor. Which is exactly what I found in this Aqua de Piedra Malbec.

Overall: I really enjoyed the wine- but it opened a little intensely at first.  The purplish deep fruit- with tastes of plum, blackberry, hints of cherry and vanilla were much more noticeable halfway through the first glass after the wine had a little time to breathe.  Perhaps, if you’re drinking at the rate of a normal person, (and not caged up at work), your first sip might be a little leisurely than mine.  I’d suggest that approach, because the wine is excellent- it just needs a few minutes for its taste to fill out with some access to oxygen.

Taste: earthy, vanilla, oak, plum, cherry were the most noticeable to my palate

Texture: Nicely balanced: richness through the first part of the taste, low acidity and medium tannins allowed the wine to sink into my tongue a little bit, which allowed for a longer finish too.  The oak and vanilla lasted a little longer than the dark fruit, which was ok by me because the flavor balance was delicious (sometimes the oak/vanilla/spice finish can be boring, but in this case it was pretty tasty).

Price: the bottle retails for $10.99 which is a total steal!!  That might be the best part about this wine- with all of that character, taste, body… it’s a pretty inexpensive bottle.

Food pairing: Even if you’re not stuck at work, late on a Monday, enjoying a Lindt chocolate dinner… this is a fantastic choice. I think it would taste even better with some food balance; I was thinking it would go particularly well with a  hearty, spicy, or smoky bbq or spicy pasta sauce.

JuliaUncorked says: 8/10- excellent buy!