Wine Reviews

Shows engaging aromas of slate, mountain herbs and fresh plum. This red’s pristine structure balances the plum and berry flavors against a saline edge, which lends a mouthwatering quality and lengthens the finish around black pepper notes and smooth-textured tannins.

Rich but fresh blackberries with dark chocolate, sandalwood with violet and graphite. Just a hint of prune that won’t bother. Full-bodied, ripe and juicy on the palate with firm, fine-grained tannins rounding out the fleshy black fruit. Juicy and pretty long.

The 2019 Malbec Single Vineyard Serenade hails from a vineyard planted on clay and lime soils in 1935 in Agrelo. Fermented with skins. Salmon pink in the glass. It has a Semillón-like nose. In the mouth, it has a good, fatty body and texture with a gentle, fruity white wine flavor and malic acidity.

The Agrelo single-vineyard 2018 Malbec Serenade is from vines planted in 1935. It feels quite classical—ripe at 15% alcohol and generously oaked after maturing in 225- and 600-liter French barriques, 66% of them new, for one year. They are moving to larger barrels and reducing the new oak, just to support the structure. This wine (and the rest of the single-vineyard reds) is not oaky at all; this is floral and aromatic, typical Agrelo. This is very open and balanced, with a round palate and round tannins. The deep gravels need old vines to deliver this quality. This has to be the finest Serenade to date.

A ripe, spicy nose with plenty of blackberries, graphite, violets and ink. Some sweet spices and walnut, too. Juicy and tight on the palate with dense and fine-grained tannins that extend to a long, spicy finish.