In my incessant search for a drinkable and affordable wine here in China, I often turn my sights towards the cheaper but consistent bottles from South America and other less famous than EU regions; Great Wall "brand" is beyond all possible consideration and anything from France, fodder or not, is expensive beyond comprehension. I picked up this bottle of Malbec in one of our local "foreign goods" shops for about 13 bucks which isn't too much more than you would pay for it state side as wine-searcher put it about 10 bucks in a few different shops.
I don't really know what draws me to Malbec over and over; perhaps it's just the novelty.
Sadly to say, there wasn't much going on in the way of food pairing that evening when I uncorked the bottle letting loose all kinds of boozy nose-notes. We had your typical Chinese fare of steamed this or fried that, but all organic, as I usually pay some farmers each month in the mountains of Guangdong to bring some veggies and eggs for me; friend's relatives. Veggies, meats, eggs; that's about as far as you can go for pairing.
I recalled the last time I had this particular Malbec was a 2004 vintage earlier in the year and considering the booze-nose I was getting from this bottle of 06, the 2004 must have mellowed considerably. Nose was seriously booze, booze, booze even after I let the bottle open for more than 30 minutes before we began to taste. The rest of the experience was pretty decent, though, as you get a decently long finish of what I swear to be ripe blueberries and fruits. It was also just tannic enough to get a good dry pucker but not so dry that you need a glass of water for a chaser. Color was a deep purple with a bluish edge.
Overall a fun wine; although, it would have been more fun if I could have gotten it for 5 or 6 bucks which is what I guess it should be really priced at. If you can find a bottle of the 04 or earlier, I had a 2002 that was nice (ripe berries; plum nose; beautiful violet color), it is a good drinking wine.
We still suffer out here in the hinterlands of wine. Pray for us and send care packages!