Malbec Ascendant

Winter pruning has begun in many of Long Island’s vineyards.

Some vines will be trimmed, others pulled out, making way for new plantings that reflect changes in the marketplace. One variety on everyone’s mind?

Malbec.

The reputation of this ancient Bordeaux grape variety has radically changed in the past decade, all due to international investors who championed the grape in Argentina and altered it to conform to more global-style wines.

Malbec was brought to Mendoza, Argentina in 1853. At the time, it and carménère, introduced at the same time, were Bordeaux’s leading red wine varieties. As these varieties went into decline in France after being decimated there by phylloxera, they prospered, ungrafted, in the drier climate of the Andes, where phylloxera was absent.

But in Argentina, they were made as beverage alcohol, not as refined luxury wines. Made in cowhide or concrete fermenters, Mendoza malbec was the dominant grape for the vast amount of red wine consumed there.

Meanwhile in France, the vineyards of Bordeaux were replanted with more cabernet sauvignon and merlot than malbec. Since malbec did not take well to grafting, it became seen as an ordinary blending grape, marginalized as new vineyards were planted worldwide.

This view was reflected at a Manhattan tasting of Argentine malbecs I attended about eight years ago. One of our most influential wine journalists asked our hosts, “Why do you even bother making malbec?”

The Argentines got the last laugh. Today, malbec exports from Argentina to the U.S. are worth $321 million.

Both the Argentine boom of the mid-90s and the bust of 2001 attracted investment from European and American wine companies, which saw opportunities in a country with cheap labor, an established wine culture with skills to go with it and vast agricultural potential.

Unlike the Spanish, French and Italian vintners that planted Argentina’s vineyards beginning in 1541 came to Argentina expressly to make wines for international export. They brought with them a new standard, based on French and California wines that were awarded high scores by Robert Parker and the Wine Spectator—“fruit bomb” wines with plenty of alcohol and oak, made from low-yielding vines and freshed by the addition of tartaric acid.

The old Argentine malbec, cheap and raw, still exists, but most of it stays in Argentina, where Argentines consume about 10 gallons of wine per capita (in contrast to U.S. consumption of about 3 gallons per capita) yearly. The 149 pounds of beef consumed per capita, per year, there is a compelling partner for their great sloshing of malbec.

Hamburger and steak-loving Americans now look to Argentine malbec for well-crafted value wines from the new international style that now dominates Argentina’s export market. Even high-priced malbecs have gained traction here. Often blended with other traditional Bordeaux varieties (merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and petit verdot), the oak-aged iterations of this once-maligned grape have expanded the international market for malbec.

A recently-tasted example includes Amancaya, from Bodegas Caro, a spin-off brand from one of Argentina’s oldest wineries, Catena, in a venture with the famous Bordeaux Barons de Rothschild (Lafite). The 2010 Amancaya is a malbec-dominated blend that bridges the Bordeaux and Argentine styles. Subdued like a traditional Bordeaux, it has the alcohol (14.5 percent) and residual sugar (almost two grams per liter) of an “international” style red.

Alpamanta, another recent taste, is a more spicy, meaty, organic malbec that’s 5 percent cabernet sauvignon. It’s made in Mendoza by an alliance of Swiss, Dutch and French investors going for the “organic” market.

The Lagarde Single Vineyard Merlot is an appealing 100-percent varietal. It’s from a 110-year-old vineyard managed by a third-generation Argentine owner, Sofia Pescarmona del Bosci, who graduated from Tufts University.

Similarly, Argentine vintner Anabelle Sielecki appropriated her family’s venerable 82-year-old ungrafted Mendoza vines for a new venture with a Bordeaux-trained winemaker to produce the malbec-dominated blend Mendel Unus. This wine is the epitome of an international-style red, with added elegance and subtlety that justifies its $50 price tag.

This kind of price, and the improved reputation of Argentine malbec that drives it, are making Long Island’s grape growers rethink this popular grape. This year, for the first time, Peconic Bay Winery harvested malbec from vines converted from merlot. Pindar, Macari, Paumanok, Lenz, Raphael, Martha Clara, Lieb and Shinn all integrate malbec into various red blends, sometimes releasing a 100% varietal malbec in an exceptional vintage. Shinn characterizes its 2008 Malbec as “rich, highly structured, and complex.”

Clearly, here, as in Argentina, malbec is growing in stature.