Our tasting group tasted blind 8 red wines from Argentina or Chile. I had expected this to be a taste-off of Malbec vs Cab based wines but it was not. There was only one Malbec, '05 Bramare Vina Cobos Lujan de Cuyo, that to my taste was what I expected, too goopy. There was also a syrah and a cabernet from Argentina. From Chile was three Bordeaux blends, all decent and two carmenere.
This is what I got out of the tasting. The Argentina wines were all higher alcohol and very, very new world, not my style of wine. Chilean wines were similar to Bordeaux but slightly new world and at the right price, about $20, worth the price. I liked the '04 Montes Alpha Cab. The most exciting finding was carmenere. It appears as a blending grape in the Bordeaux blends of Chile replacing Merlot. It is also a very enjoyable wine when bottled by itself. Not sure why it replaces merlot because it ripens very late and even though it has some merlot characteristics it has a spicey hot pepper element, at least in the two we tried. Give me a choice of a merlot or carmenere and I will take the carmenere every time. An interesting tasting but with the exception of carmenere and a decent $20 cab from Chile think I will stick to Europe.
Walt