One More Bottle of Wine: 2007 Clos de Los Siete

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Sep 24, 2009 8:20PM

Like most, our personal budgets have tightened significantly over the past year or so. Not that cash burned a hole in our pocket before. It's just that we're being even more cognizant of closeouts and deep discounts at the wine shop than ever before. Rare is the wine that we'll buy at retail.

Clos de Los Siete is a winery from Argentina's Mendoza region; Malbec is the predominant grape grown in the region. Clos de Los Siete consulted on their blended red with controversial French oenologist Michel Rolland. Rolland helps vineyards create wines that reflect both his personal tastes in Bordeaux styles and those of Robert Parker. That is, fruit-forward wines with heavy oaking. What makes Rolland a hot rod for criticism is his use of "micro-oxygenation," a process where the winemaker uses bubblers to oxygenate the wine post-fermentation. This facilitates the softening of tannins before the wine is transferred to barrels, in order to achieve Rolland's desired results. In the documentary on wine globalization Mondovino, Rolland dismissively tells the filmmakers that if a winery had to ask what micro-oxygenation was, they didn't need his services. Le douche?

Regardless of Pollard's disposition and methods, the 2007 Clos de Los Siete blended red is almost art in a bottle at a suggested retail price of under $20. Malbec makes up 48 percent of the wine, with 28 percent merlot and equal amounts of syrah and cabernet rounding out the composition. We prefer a malbecs to be rich in tannins, almost like drinking a shag carpet. The tannins are present on this wine, but they've been softened significantly for a malbec-based wine that's only two years old. The fruit on this wine is very sweet and jammy. If you're clinging onto the ghost of grilling as the season changes, this would work well with a nice grilled steak, some barbeque, or lamb shank.

We did a check of both Sam's and Binny's websites for the 2007 Clos de Los Siete. Binny's lists the wine at $14.99, $3 less than Sam's.