10/03/2012

Featured wine of the week: 2008 Viña Alicia Brote Negro Malbec


Viña Alicia is a winery that combines the wine grower tradition of its makers and the privileged location to get collection wines.
With more than 25 years of research and study to obtain "excellent wines", in 1998 Alicia Mateu Arizu, wife of the well-known "winemaker" Alberto Arizu (Luigi Bosca's alma mater), started the commercialization of the wines that bear her name, along with the youngest of her three sons, Rodrigo Arizu.
Featured as a "chateau", the winery "Viña Alicia" is surrounded by a 10-hectare vineyard with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot grapes and some vines that are hardly found in Argentina, such as Nebbiolo, Grenache Noir, Carignan, Albariño and Savagnin.
Although the winery has a 50.000 liters production capacity, it only commercializes 25.000 bottles per year of Viña Alicia's wines and 80.000 bottles of both Paso de Piedra's wines, which are all exported to fourteen countries."Viña Alicia" currently enjoys the international prestige and recognition of the most outstanding personalities of the wine world.
 
Brote Negro is a "natural rareness". A Malbec biotype, found in a very ancient vineyard of vines from this variety. A follow up of this "rareness" was made during a long time. Then, those vines with different characteristics were transplanted and they currently give origin to the grape variety which makes up this wine. The most prominent characteristic at first sight is its very dark, almost black buds (vine branches) which last for a certain time. Buds grow straight and bunches are smaller and looser than those of the regular Malbec, the winery explains in its website.
 
Luján de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina. 94 points. by Stephen Tanzer. Bright, fully red-ruby. Knockout perfume of blackberry, violet, minerals, licorice; conveys a tiny-berry quality. Compellingly intense and racy in the mouth, with great energy and definitionto the perfumed flavors of blackberry, boysenberry, minerals and licorice pastille. This suave, classy, essentially gentle wine finishes with mounting tannins, great sweetness and terrific grip These "black shoots" are a mutation of malbec from the same hundred-year-old vineyard used to make Las Compuertas wine. This wine has been consistenly superb in recent years , but 2008 gets my highest rating yet. - 

  www.rosellsoler.com
 

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