20 years of Malbec blends aging with grace
A group of professional palates recently gathered for dinner at Auro, the one-Michelin-starred restaurant at the Four Seasons Resort and Residences Napa Valley in Calistoga, California, for a tasting hosted by Clos de los Siete founder Michel Rolland and managing director Ramiro Barrios to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the estate, located in Argentina’s Uco Valley.
In a surprise twist, six vintages of its flagship wine—2006, 2009, 2012,
2015, 2018, and 2021—were presented blind, and we were invited to guess which was which by placing printed hang tags on the glasses.
Clos de los Siete is a Bordeaux-style blend of Malbec with Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Petit Verdot, and Cabernet Franc, the percentages of which vary by vintage. The wine is assembled by Rolland from a portion of the production of four bodegas—
Monteviejo, Cuvelier los Andes, DiamAndes, and Bodega Rolland, each of which also produces its own wines— using fruit from a 2,100-acre vineyard that sits at 3,800 feet in the foothills of the Andes Mountains.
First released in 2002, the wine is notable for its quality to-price ratio, typically retailing for $20. For myself, navigating this tasting
with some degree of success was possible thanks a similar event I attended six years earlier that, fortunately, included a few of the same vintages.
Clues from the past
Out of curiosity as to how the wines had evolved in the interim, I brought along my notes from the 2018 tasting with Rolland of vintages 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2015. Blind tasting blended wines presents a number of challenges: Blending masks varietal characteristics and creates synergistic effects that can’t be attributed to one variety.
Malbec, meanwhile, presents its own challenges as a variety that is known to evolve quite rapidly during its first five years in the bottle but then tends to plateau and develop slowly over the subsequent
30 years. This lull in maturation can leave tasters with few clues as to its age; understanding vintage conditions for the years in question can therefore be helpful.
The 2021 vintage was the only wine in the flight younger than five years old, making it the easiest to identify given its expressive primary fruit and spices. The remaining vintages showed more red than black fruit with the exception of 2012, which stood out as the most dark-fruited and extracted wine of the lineup.
Vintages 2015 and 2018 were similar, with lean profiles and tighter,
granular tannins—although the former showed far less intensity than it had when I tasted it six years ago. Containing 57% Malbec, the 2009
vintage hadn’t budged much since 2018, showing marked freshness,
leaner red fruits, and notes of camphor; it was the only older wine of
the flight that I was confident about identifying.
The oldest wine, the 2006 with 45% Malbec, was still quite fresh and floral with receding red fruit, layers of umami, and a drying finish.
Approaching two decades in the bottle, it didn’t resemble its former self, which showed darker fruit, but was still holding up well.
Rolland, for his part, expressed contentment with the way the wines
were showing that evening as well as with the parade of impressive dishes that Auro chef Rogelio Garcia paired with them.