2007 Trivento Amado Sur - reviewed by Kerri

And we’re back!

Apologies for the radio silence on the blog. With the holidays and then some health issues, reviewing wine has proven a bit difficult in the last several weeks. Now that the second blizzard of the 2009-2010 winter season has hit our area, we’re happy to be snowed in with a bottle of wine, heat, and our laptops.

I picked up this wine from a local grocery store, so presumably it’s readily available in the states. I’ve actually purchased this wine a couple of times (Jonathan loves it, as I’m sure you’ll see from his review), but I have yet to drink it. I wanted to review this one in particular because Jonathan loves a Malbec and I’m notorious for hating them. So, with that as an intro, here’s my take.



My take:

There is quite a bit of intense fragrance on the nose. It smells purple-red to me. That in and of itself is a bit surprising to me, but I’ll get into that more in a moment.

A few swirl and sips later, I’d say it tastes dark purple and has most of its intensity and complexity in the middle. There is a nice subtle, yet mildly spicy quality in the middle. The finish is medium – not long, but not short either.

I’d say it’s medium bodied. And it’s not particularly dry, but it’s not velvety either. It’s too astringent to be velvety. A more velvety texture would likely develop with time, given the blend of grapes.

I’d call this one a good sipping wine, if you like the purple, maybe purple-black, end of the flavor spectrum. What I find most surprising is what it lacks. It lacks that gray ashiness that I usually get from Malbecs. Must be tempered by the Syrah and Bonarda.

The Bonarda is a grape with which I’m unfamiliar. A quick search online reveals that it is widely grown in Argentina and is the same grape as Italy’s Dolce Nero, or Sweet Black. That would certainly explain the darkness that I get from this wine. Similarly, the Syrah is undoubtedly moderating some of the Malbec’s gray and bringing it more to the red side.

In taking the photograph of the wine, I saw the Wine Spectator sticker on the label. Apparently the Wine Spectator gave it 89 points. All things considered, I'd expect this one to age well.

The facts:

2007 Trivento Amado Sur
Region: Mendoza, Argentina
Variety: 72% Malbec, 16% Bonarda, 12% Syrah

Price point: $13

2008 Rocca Bello Negroamaro - reviewed by Kerri

The facts:
2008 Rocca Bello Negroamaro
Region: Puglia, Italy
Variety: Negroamaro

We picked this up one day at a local liquor store because we’ve had negroamaros a few times before and Jonathan has liked them. That, and we were looking for a slightly less expensive wine to review. (I’m not sure how we routinely choose bottles that are around $13.99, but that seems to be our resting point these days.)




My take:

It smells dark red and young (i.e., I could smell the alcohol), but I guess you’d expect that since this is a 2008. I’d say it’s medium to full bodied and complex enough for the price point. (It’s not a $30 wine in an $11 bottle. Nor is it a $7 wine in an $11 bottle. It seems right on the money for $11, maybe a tad more complex than you’d expect at that price.)

When just sipping...
Most of the flavor is up front, comes across as dark purple, the middle seemed a bit weak for me, the finish is longer than I expected at the price point, and it’s on the dry side.

Pulling some air over it is when the wine really expresses itself. The flavors are more balanced through the beginning and middle. It tastes dark red to purple up front and then the taste buds perk up a bit in the middle, where you get more of the complexity, and the finish is even longer with a bit of spiciness to it.

I wish I could write sonnets about it, but it’s just not doing it for me tonight for some reason. It makes me want to have some cheese. Perhaps as a sipping wine, I find it a bit too big? Not mellow enough? Not sure. I suspect it would age well and if I weren’t full from Thanksgiving leftovers, I would definitely be tempted to break out some manchego and give it another try.

Okay, so let 5 minutes pass and pick this up again. As soon as I wrote that perhaps food would add to my enjoyment of the wine, I felt guilty for not giving it that chance. So, I broke out some cheese.

I do enjoy the wine more with the cheese. As I said, I think it’s just a tad too big for my tastes to be a sipping wine. In the interest of full disclosure..., the wine bottle itself says it’s “perfect with red meats, pizza and all Mediterranean spiced dishes.”

Price point:

It was $10.99 in DC.

2007 Onix Classic

Ok ok… So when I said I got dragged out a while back for a “good” Australian wine that wasn’t exactly accurate. Truth be told, I was lured out to New Heights with the promise of two interesting wines. The first being the aforementioned Cat amongst the pigeons, and the second, being the topic of this particular missive.

So we actually had the Onix a while back, and never really got around to reviewing it. Sadly my notes on the original tasting were lost when I decided to erase the notes on my blackberry to make room for directions for a thousand mile ride in the rain (of course at the time I didn’t know it was going to rain, but that’s neither here nor there). That being said, I couldn’t in all good conscience review the wine without trying it again. That gets us to snag #1.

Snag #1 New Heights has Gin….lots of it. We went back, I tried it again and got derailed by cocktails. Win some; lose some…that’s my motto, and hell who isn’t willing to try a third time. And this, dear reader, is where we ran into snag #2.

Snag #2 nobody carries it. Now if my gin soaked memories served me correctly, it was pretty good and I want to take a crack at it while at the keyboard so that I could transcribe its loveliness into prose so I would just pop down to the store and grab a bottle and review it again (in the name of science of course). The problem with that being, we couldn’t really find it anywhere locally. That is, of course, until Kerri’s brother completely randomly found it and bought it for her as a thank you gift for babysitting.

So bottle in fridge, it was time for a reckoning. Well…a reckoning less in the OK Corral kind of way and more in a, hey let's have some wine!

So it’s a Garnacha and Carinena blend, which in my book would bode well. Pulling it out of the fridge and pouring a glass brings you a wine that is surprisingly purple, and I wasn’t really ready for that. Swirling it around in proper hoity toity fashion gives off a somewhat fruitier nose than I was I was expecting. Color me unimpressed. Right about then I was wondering what I saw in it the first two times that had me coming back for thirds. I needed to think about this and take its full measure in, there had to have been something to it but I wasn’t getting it from a sippy sip.

After pouring a glass and relaxing, letting it open up if you will, I am now in firm belief that my wine fridge is just too cold. It was free, and the temp knob doesn’t really work, and I am thinking 55 is just too cold (its stuck there). So warmed up and opened up, here is what I thought (Yes I know it took 500 words to get to the wine, but honestly its more entertaining this way and you didn’t really have anything better to do).

It's old world, first and foremost. That fruit sensation and nose declines greatly once it opens up, and I am sure if I were a true wine snob, I might actually describe it as blossoming, but since I’m not, I won't. The fact remains however that this wine does well with some time and some air. So much so, that I now recall why I am having it for the third time. Why you say? Simply put, this wine doesn’t suck. I am going to put it on my list of wines that everyone should try at least once. I wont say go out and buy a case, but seriously think about having a romp through the hills of Priorat (yes its hilly there, and yes I did look that up just to make that joke work). Beyond that, I’d like to see this wine again in say 5 or so years (or maybe find a bottle from say 2000-2004) I suspect with a little age, it might go from “ok” to love in a bottle.

We had it with no pairings any time we drank it, but I can see it with a big chunk of Manchego and a pile of Chorizo.