Red Diamond Malbec

Wine: Red Diamond Malbec

Grape: Malbec

Region: Mendoza, Argentina

Vintage: 2011

Price: $8.99

In the glass: Red Diamond wine is as dark as the night, showing blackish-red color with purplish streaks going out into a deep painted violet-red rim definition with very high viscosity.

On the nose: The wine is redolent with loads of crushed ripened morello cherries, like a warm compote with blueberry pie, fleshy black plum, sloe fruit, loganberry and marionberry jam. There are hints of earthy spices, star anise and minerals, with touches of oak references underlying.

On the palate: It is a huge mouthful of wine with palate-coating tannin structure and oodles of black fruits intermingling. It has youthful mixed black fruits such as marionberries, bramble and cherries going on right through the juicy midpalate, where those young but ripe tannins really make themselves known. The finish is delicious.

Odds and ends: This is the first wine from 2011 that I have selected for review, and it inevitably had to be an Antipodean or South American one, given that they harvest in March in the Southern Hemisphere and the wines are therefore usually released the following year. One of the things about the relatively high-altitude-grown malbec from the giant Mendoza area at the foot of the Andes Mountains, is that it is consistently ripe and delicious year in and year out. Very rarely do they see adverse weather patterns that can normally ruin a good vintage, so the wines from here are always solid, sturdy and full-bodied in style, showing all those great earthy characteristics that we expect from malbec-based wines. Red Diamond itself is part of a group of wines that you can find in the market, where they source grapes from several places and have them all named Red Diamond Malbec from Argentina, Red Diamond Cabernet from Napa, and so on. They are an excellent value. This wine demands meat, and something medium-rare off the grill is the ticket. Drink it now through 2016.

Gil Lempert-Schwarz's wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.