Malbec’s long journey to greatness

When highly regarded wine critics give 100-point scores to wines made from malbec you would have to concede that malbec now ranks in the top echelon of red wine varieties. But these wines are rare, very expensive, and are made from fruit grown in a very special place. How did it happen?

Malbec originated in the Bordeaux region in south-western France. In the 19th century malbec was widely planted and well regarded, often making a major contribution to wines from leading chateaux. In the 1850s, some malbec cuttings were transported to Argentina and their high quality was critical to the variety’s future path to greatness. But I digress.

Late in the 19 th century disaster struck in Bordeaux and the rest of France, the phylloxera louse wiping out most of the vineyards. When malbec was replanted in Bordeaux, on resistant American rootstocks, the clones were selected for high yields, rather than premium quality. The grapes and bunches were huge, but the quality was not and malbec’s reputation in Bordeaux began to flag.

Meanwhile, in Argentina, the locals took another major step on the path to greatness for malbec – they planted at altitude. Mendoza, averaging about 1000 metres above sea level, is now the heart of the vast malbec plantings in Argentina. The wines are usually bold in style, deep purple in colour, black-fruited and often nudge 14.5% alcohol. The world took notice.

But the journey wasn’t over. Diligent producers in the region began a program of clonal selection, seeking out superior vines, with smaller bunches and smaller berries, and propagating them. As a result, the high-quality fruit that emerged from this process looks totally different to the big berried malbec grown in France. In fact, the Argentinians won’t even call the French version malbec. They dismissively call it Côt, an old French term for the variety.

Now the final step. Not content with making big, bold wines from malbec, some Argentinian producers made the move that would eventually lead to memorable malbec wines of elegance and class. They sought out the high country in the Mendoza region, at altitudes around 1500 metres, and planted malbec. Critics said the fruit would never ripen on such cool sites but they were wrong. Wonderful red wines emerged, now with red and blue fruits, aromas of violets, just 13.5% alcohol, bright acids and fine tannins. The sheer quality of these red wines stunned the wine world.

Why do I care? Because Colmar Estate has just harvested its first crop of malbec, the clones sourced from Argentina, the climate on our high-altitude site near-identical to that in those very high vineyards in Argentina. Do you think I’m excited?