A couple of weeks ago I received a bottle of Doña Paula Estate Malbec 2009 from their PR firm. Getting free samples is always a delight but I wonder if it will cloud my judgment when I taste the wine. To keep an unbiased opinion, I like to blind taste wine samples with wine friends and have one or two other wines of the same varietal for comparison. With that in mind, I purchased an impressively packaged bottle of Uno Estate Antigal Malbec 2007 for $14.99 at Trader Joe’s. At Costco I purchased one of my all-time bargain wines, the Pascual Toso 2009 Malbec for $8.99.
Four of us blind tasted the three wines and we immediately agreed that all three wines were very pleasing and very Malbec in their characteristics, with lots of peppery spice and blackberry flavors. Amazingly, we were in total agreement in ranking the wines from favorite to least favorite. The Doña Paula definitely had a leg up on the other two wines. Two characteristics distinguished this wine from the others. The aromas were abundant and the finish of the wine lingered in the mouth long after. It is a beautiful wine and will go nicely with poultry and various red meat dishes. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any local wine shop that carries this wine. The best I could do was find the 2008 Doña Paula wine at Wines.com for $13.49. I am hoping this will be the price for the 2009 once they get it in stock. I sent an email to the distributor to see where else they have plans to sell this wine in the San Francisco Bay Area. I will keep you posted via the comment section of this post.
The Pascual Toso was our second choice and of course that means the Uno Estate Antigal was our third choice. Pascual Toso is an amazing wine value at $8.99. In a previous post I mentioned that past vintages of this wine have been among the most popular selling wines at the well-respected K&L Wines retailer. My local Costco had several cases left as of last week. K&L also has this wine in stock for $9.99.
The Uno Estate Antigal Malbec 2007 is an excellent wine but I would not put into the bargain category, considering we liked the other two wines better and they both sell for less than Uno’s price of $14.99. The bottle is quite impressive. It has a big metal number one glued to the bottle that cries out “Buy me, I’m number one.” And in fact, that is why I chose to buy this wine over other Malbec wines on the TJ shelf. I think the bottle packaging may have added a couple of dollars to the cost of the wine.
fyi, I got a bottle of the Doña Paula Estate Malbec 2009 from Costco for $11.99
I KNOW I purchased a Dona Paula Wine @ Costco [Mission Valley Store, San Diego, CA., in Feb.[14th],2011 for approx $7.99 or $8.99 [took it to a friend’s house for dinner, corked it, and 4 of us shared it and were grabbing for the singular bottle as if we had a drinking problem…it was sooooo good. It might have been a blend…did not noticed that… but it was a Shiraz [Syrah?], and I think there was a royal blue wrap on the cork???. Anyhow, I have returned to buy it at the same Costco and all they have right now is a Malbec at the same price. I know that the one in question was a Shiraz as I love Shiraz and that’s why I bought it [ and the price, too!] I now, cannot, for the life of me, remember the specific brand name to purchase more…Do you know the specific label name and vendor, or is Costco selling it at a higher price now?? What is the specific name of this particular bottle, please??!!!
It was probably this wine Dona Paula, Los Cardos Syrah. I have not seen this at my Costco but just do a Google search for it and you should be able to find it online. Good suggestion! All the Dona Paula wines I have tasted are very good.