I have been looking for a great, cheap Argentine malbec for years. The Yellow + Blue ($10 for a 1-liter box, available at Central Market ) may be it.
A couple of caveats: Availability could be limited when the current supply runs out, and there’s no guarantee that the wine will be around after this vintage. That’s because it’s the project of a startup importer called J. Soif, and wine importing is a difficult business. What works one year may not work the next year.
Having said that, the Yellow + Blue is a $10 Hall of Fame candidate that delivers more than $10 worth of wine. It has well-done tannins, something that’s rare in cheap malbec, and the fruit isn’t so over the top that it covers everything else else up, another flaw in $10 malbec.
So what about the box? Soif boss Matthew Cain, who has worked for Kermit Lynch, one of the best importers in the world, says his focus is not only on quality wine, but on green wine. Hence organic grapes and the box, called a TetraPak, which is supposed to be less harmful to the environment than a glass bottle.
This is an interesting sales pitch, but the problem with selling wine as environmentally friendly is that most of the wine that makes that claim doesn’t taste as good as the Yellow + Blue. Consumers are stuck with a tradeoff between quality and carbon footprint, and what’s the point of that? If all I cared about was the environment, I’d drink boxed Franzia.
Other notes:
• Grapefest returns Sept. 11-14, and I’ll be on hand to offer insights on spitting, swirling and tasting wine as an introduction to the festival’s world-famous People’s Choice competition. I’ll be in the Culinary Pavilion at 11:45 a.m. on Sept. 12.
• Texas has 163 wineries, up 300 percent from 2000. This is an almost incomprehensible number of wineries, given the state’s un-grape-friendly climate and restrictive liquor laws. Yet wineries keep opening -– more than 40 in the past couple of years alone.
• Some of the state’s best sommeliers will face off Sunday and Monday in Austin at the third annual Texas Sommelier conference in a competition to determine the state’s best sommelier. This is one of my favorite events of the wine year; my only regret is that the contest isn’t open to the public, like a football game.
