I went down to Chronicle Wine Cellar on the corner of California and Lake.  (I have a Yelp review of this place here.)  I love Chronicle Wine Cellar because it’s so small and unpretentious–it’s on the bottom floor of a rundown apartment building, for God’s sake!  They also offer a very good selection of wines at dirt-cheap prices.

I spent all of $22.47 on three wines: the one I am drinking now is the “Sedna” malbec from Flavio Senetiner.

It’s a malbec from the Mendoza region of Argentina, named after the furthest planet in our solar system.

I had selected a sparkling wine (for the ladies) and a rosé (because of the heat) and wanted to get a smooth-drinking, easy red to round out my trio.  It was either between a shiraz from Australia or this malbec.  Both were at the crazy price of $5.95.

I selected the malbec for the maybe fallacious reason that Argentina wines are generally cheaper as a whole than Australian wines–thus, I had more of a chance of finding a decent, cheap Argentinean wine than a decent, cheap Australian wine.

The verdict?

Great nose: smells spicy and red.  Doesn’t really taste like any other malbec I’ve ever had.  In fact, it reminds me more of a Languedoc wine–something like l’Esprit du Silene with its blend of syrah, grenache, and cinsault–because it seems rustic and earthy.  I can taste the garrigue in this wine, with leather and spice and a slight taste of persimmon.

Granted, there ARE malbec characteristics of cherry and berries–it seemed a bit rounder and softer than anything from the Languedoc, too.

From the Chronicle Wine Cellar website: “Here is our choice for your fruit driven lighter red. Smooth and easy drinking  with some lovely Malbec qualities. David likes it with a bit of a chill , easy to enjoy no matter how you want to serve it. From  Mendoza, Argentina.”

Overall, a great choice and a steal for $5.95.  I will update this post after pairing the wine with tonight’s dinner: marinated kalbi, or Korean barbeque.

Alex and I split the cost of the bottle, which in retrospect seems ridiculous as it retails for $10.99.  No matter: at that time we were of the impression that $5 was too much for a bottle, much less $11!

This wine is from Domaine du Silène des Peyrals in the Languedoc region of France, specifically the Coteaux du Languedoc appellation.  The Languedoc might be new to people (especially relative to its more famous cousins, Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne) but it accounts for more than a third of France’s total wine production. 

The terroir consists of Mediterranean scrubland (garrigue).  The soil is gravelly and full of sandstone.  There’s full, bright sun and fresh breezes from nearby Thau Lake.

This is a beautiful, seductive wine.  There are loads of flavor, predominantly those of earth.  There’s leather, pepper, tobacco.  There’s plum on the nose–the nose will blow you away.

The most unique thing about this wine is the mouthfeel, the texture.  It helps if you have ever had a persimmon and had that slight cottony, rough feeling in your mouth: drinking this wine leaves you with that same sensation.  It’s full, with mid- to high levels of tannin.

Alex came up with the description that this wine is like a “thornbush”: rough, wild, with deep persistent roots and brambles spreading everywhere.  It’s an amazing, amazing wine.

So much so, in fact, that the last few times I went to Vino! they were all out.  Not just at the store, mind you: every single bottle of this wine from the 2001 vintage was sold out.

Wait for the next vintage to pop up, and buy a few bottles.  At the price, you can’t afford not to.

COMPOSITION: Syrah, grenache, cinsault.

FOOD SUGGESTIONS: I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a food with this.  It’s good for an autumn night, with good conversation.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS: This is kind of a funky wine.  It’s not very fruit forward, which made me a bit hesitant to serve it to my friends.  However, they, too, loved it.  It’s sort of like the wine equivalent of, say… Elliot Smith: dark, beautiful, but also accessible.  It’s not a Coldplay wine, nor is it a Björk wine!