Do we ship to you?.
Also Recommended
Picture
Product Name
Vintage
Price
Varietal
Country
Region
Appellation
Size
Additional Discount
Original Item
2011
$89.94
Malbec
Argentina
Cuyo
Mendoza
750ml
N/A
Similar Price
2019
$89.62
Malbec
Argentina
Cuyo
Mendoza
750ml
Similar Price, Better Score
2021
$94.26
Malbec
Argentina
Cuyo
Mendoza
750ml
Better Price, Better Score
2016
$69.19
Malbec
Argentina
Cuyo
Mendoza
750ml
More wines available from Achaval-Ferrer
750ml
Bottle:
$19.17
$21.30
A very ripe, jammy cabernet franc with sweet cherries, baked strawberries and licorice spices. Very rich and fruity...
750ml
Bottle:
$19.17
$21.30
Plenty of fruit on the nose with a nice reductive and peppery edge. Dark cherries and strawberries with spiced plums...
Pre-Arrival
Achaval-Ferrer Malbec Finca Bella Vista 2009
750ml - 1 Bottle
Bottle:
$121.40
The 2009 Finca Bella Vista was sourced from a vineyard planted in 1910 giving a miserly yield of 0.75 tons per acre....
More Details
Winery
Achaval-Ferrer
Vintage: 2011
The year 2011 was an interesting year for many northern and central European countries, as the weather was more than unpredictable in the spring and summer. However, in most countries, the climatic conditions thankfully settled down in the late summer and fall. The result of this slightly difficult year of weather in France was a set of surprisingly small yields, but overall, these yields were of a higher quality than those harvested in certain previous years. A fantastic set of wines was also made in Italy and Spain, and the Rioja wines - when released - are set to be very good indeed. Austria also had superb year in 2011, with almost fifty percent more grapes being grown and used for their distinctive Gruner Veltliner wines than in the year before. Possibly the European country which had the finest 2011, though, was Portugal, with wineries in the Douro region claiming this year to be one of the best in decades for the production of Port wine, and the bright, young Vinho Verdes wines.
In the New World, the Pacific Northwest saw some of the best weather of 2011, and Washington State and Oregon reportedly had a highly successful year, especially for the cultivation of high quality red wine grapes. Chile and Argentina had a relatively cool year, which certainly helped retain the character of many of their key grape varietals, and should make for some exciting drinking. South Africa had especially good weather for their white wine grape varietals, particularly Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, and many South African wineries are reporting 2011 as one of their best years in recent memory.
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.