Beverage of the Week (B.O.W)

It is perhaps incredibly appropriate that we close this decade at BevX with a wine style that has been one of the darlings of the decade, Argentine Malbec. In fact, the category is still on the rise with no end in sight.

Like most things that appear to be new, there is a deep history. Many know that Malbec is native to France, but fewer are aware that this grape varietal has been part of the Argentine wine scene for more than 100 years.

In recent years there has been an incredible upswing in the number of wineries in the Mendoza region with a large number of foreign winemakers setting up shop in Argentina’s fashionable wine zone. However, Zuccardi is hardly a new face in the crowd having been a fixture in Mendoza for more than 40 years.

While Mendoza has many attributes for the wine grower it does have one serious deficit; water. Mendoza is a high arid zone sitting at roughly 2,000 to 3,500 feet above sea level and receives about eight inches of rain annually. In the 1950’s, Don Alberto, the father of Zuccardi’s director Jose Alberto Zuccardi founded his own irrigation company providing techniques to bring precious water to fruit growers. In 1963 Don Alberto purchased what is now the family’s Maipu vineyard planting 16 hectare (nearly 40 acres) of grapes to demonstrate the effectiveness of his unique irrigation system. The experiment was so successful that another vineyard was purchased 10 years later.

Today, Zuccardi owns and operates the largest family owned winery in Argentina with 1,400 acres of vines and over 450 employees. The Zuccardis are continuing to innovate. Recently, the Zuccardi’s have built a winery devoted to the production and ageing of sparkling wines.

The “Q” Malbec that we feature as our BOW is a blend of Malbec from Zuccardi’s La Consulta and Agrelo vineyards in Mendoza. All of the grapes were hand picked and collected in small plastic boxes to protect the ripe fruit from damage. The resulting wine is better for it showing incredibly dense and pure blackberry flavors with complex spice notes. Fantastic!