by Bill Belkin, Wines & Spirits Category Manager

I was recently in our beautiful Wines & Spirits Shop at Byerly’s St. Louis Park and overheard an interesting conversation. As a customer was grabbing a few bottles of the Gascon Malbec, another customer was telling him that the grape was from Argentina.

While Gascon is a delicious Malbec from the Mendoza region of Argentina, the origins of the grape used in this wine actually trace back to the Bordeaux region in France.

The fact that the customer quickly associated Malbec wines with Argentina underscores a couple of important and undeniable points: Argentina is rolling with Malbec, and the wines coming from that region are hot, hot, hot.

Our Wines & Spirits Shops have no less than 35 different Malbecs of all stripes and the number is growing literally every week. Why the sudden surge? Well, actually, it is not all that sudden. It's just more pronounced as more and more suppliers are realizing we Americans have a real penchant for the wines made from this grape.

Why you might ask? User friendly is the short answer. These wines are typically aromatically interesting, very flavorful, long on complexity and short on acid and tannin. In other words; they are fun to drink! And, for the most part, they are good values.

What does more money buy that $10 will not? Good question. Higher altitude vineyards, larger crop spacing, lower yields, French Oak barriques and for longer periods – all these things serve to make these wines more and more complex with greater concentration of fruit, longer finishes and greater drinking pleasure. Try a Malbec from Argentina soon!

If you’re looking for a recommendation, pick up some of the highly rated wines from the Finca Decero 2007 vintage. They’re available for less than $25 per bottle.