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Product Name
Vintage
Price
Varietal
Country
Region
Appellation
Size
Additional Discount
Original Item
2012
$17.64
Malbec
Argentina
Cuyo
Mendoza
750ml
N/A
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2020
$16.94
Malbec
Argentina
Cuyo
Mendoza
750ml
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2021
$16.90
Malbec
Argentina
Cuyo
Mendoza
750ml
12B / $16.56
Best QPR in Price range
2019
$17.94
Malbec
Argentina
Cuyo
Mendoza
750ml
12B / $15.05
More Details
Winery
Angulo Innocenti
Vintage: 2012
2012 has, so far been a positive year for wineries around the world. While it may be a little too early to speak of the wines being made in the northern hemisphere, European and North American wineries have already begun reporting that their harvesting season has been generally very good, and are predicting to continue with the kind of successes they saw in 2011. However, 2012 has been something of a late year for France, due to unpredictable weather throughout the summer, and the grapes were ripening considerably later than they did in 2011 (which was, admittedly, an exceptionally early year). French wineries are claiming, though, that this could well turn out to be advantageous, as the slow ripening will allow the resulting wines to express more flavour and features of the terroir they are grown in.
The southern hemisphere has seen ideal climatic conditions in most of the key wine producing countries, and Australia and New Zealand particularly had a superb year, in particular with the Bordeaux varietal grapes that grow there and which love the humidity these countries received plenty of. Also enjoying a fantastic year for weather were wineries across Argentina and Chile, with the Mendoza region claiming that 2012 will be one of their best vintages of the past decade. Similar claims are being made across the Chilean wine regions, where Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon had an especially good year. These two grape varietals also produced characterful wines on the coastal regions of South Africa this year.
Varietal: Malbec
Malbec grapes have been grown for centuries in the Old World, and whilst many wineries had and continue to have great success with these dark and rather demanding grapes, they are famously susceptible to rot and quickly lose their best features should the weather not be as good as they need it to be. As such, it is the New World Malbec wines which have really made this old and respected varietal a household name, and the many single variety bottles we see in our supermarkets and wine stores bearing this grape have been some of the biggest and most pleasing success stories of recent years. However, Malbec is often and was traditionally used as a blending grape, offering its strong tannins and heavy, plummy fruit flavors to milder, mellower wines to boost their character, and many of these blended wines rank amongst the finest in the world. As such, Malbec is a highly versatile grape which has spread across the globe to produce some very different results, each one pleasing, and each one packed with flavor and character.
Region: Cuyo
The historic mountainous region of Cuyo in central-west Argentina, remains the nation's key wine producing area to this day, producing over eighty percent of the country's wines. Argentinian wines have gone from strength to strength over the past few decades, and it is undoubtedly the region of Cuyo which produces Argentina's most characterful and representative wines. Cuyo's dry and arid soil, rich in iron and other minerals has proven to be an ideal environment for the cultivation of Malbec grapes, alongside several other varietals which thrive in the hot climate and reach full ripeness each autumn, expressing their fruit-forward character. The vineyards of Cuyo are fed by the great Desaguadero River and its tributaries, helped by the extensive irrigation projects which have been undertaken over the past century.
Country: Argentina
Anyone who has been the Mendoza area of Argentina may be surprised to find that this is one of the primary wine regions of the country, now comfortably sitting as the fifth largest producer of wine in the world. The Mendoza is an incredibly dry and arid desert, which receives as little as two hundred millimeters of rainfall per year, and supports very little life at all. We can thank the ancient technologies of the Huarpes Indians for Argentina's current booming wine trade, as they managed to irrigate the region by digging channels from the Mendoza river, thus creating an area which had enough access to water with which to grow vines. Not only this, but the grape which Argentina primarily uses for their wines – Malbec – actually flourishes in such conditions, as it is less likely to suffer from the rot it so often finds in the considerably damper regions of Europe it has its origins in. Such expertise and foresight has resulted in Argentina being able to produce high quality wines of both red and white types, with Malbec, Bonarda and Cabernet Sauvignon dominating the vineyards for red wines, and Torrontés, Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc making up for most of the white wine produced there.