Argentina is best known for malbec, which it has turned into the country’s national grape. Wine drinkers associate malbec with Argentina in the same way that people associate shiraz with Australia. But that doesn’t mean the country’s winemakers don’t produce other interesting wines.
The las Liebres (about $10 at World Market) is made with an Italian variety called bonardo, and by Italians in Argentina, apparently. It’s certainly worth a taste. The wine is fruity and ripe, with lots of blackberry, very little in the way of tannins, and no oak. It’s a heftier, darker version of Beaujolais nouveau. Drink this with any tomato-based Italian dish, grilled sausages or barbecue.
One note about the vintage: The current release is 2007, but there is still some 2006 in the stores. The ‘06 is equally fine.
Wine notes
• No less than Robert Parker’s 2008 wine buying guide rated six Texas wineries as worthwhile: Alamosa Wine Cellars, Becker Vineyards, Cap*Rock Winery, Inwood Estates Vineyards, McPherson Cellars and Sandstone Cellars. I’d quibble with Cap*Rock, since so little of its wine is made with Texas grapes. Also, where are Llano Estacado and Messina Hof?
• Roy E. Renfro Jr. and Sherrie S. McLeRoy have won the international Gourmand Award’s Best Wine History book for their Grape Man of Texas: Thomas Volney Munson & the Origins of American Viticulture, published by the Wine Appreciation Guild. This is a big deal; Munson was the Texan whose pioneering work with grapevines helped save the French wine industry during the phylloxera epidemic a century ago.
• WineFest 2008 is Saturday in Addison. More than a dozen wineries and two dozen restaurants will be on hand.
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