This turned out to be an interesting wine to review. On our first pass at writing down notes, we weren't super impressed, and just got thrown off by this smokiness that couldn't come off the nose.
This does occur, and usually a decant will help, which was what happened in this case. A little air brought this one out of its shell, and it turned out ok, not maybe the massive Malbec value buy we were hoping for though.
The price is right on, especially with the limited time Costco discount of $6 which brings the price down to only $7.99. This discount is supposed to run out on 10/23 but as we've noted before sometimes that discounted price becomes the standard price. You never know...
Let's get into the wine. After our first glass without a decant, we were almost instantly going 85 points. It felt smoky, tight, and disjointed. After the decant, we're going to bump that up a bit. Still nowhere near the 92 points that Wine Enthusiast gave this bottle.
On the pour it is a deep purple with mostly dark fruit flavor, black cherry, plum and blackberry; after a little decant, this one opened up a bit, burned off that toasty smoke and became a pretty good drink. Still a little burnt toast on the nose but in the mouth it got really good. A little more red fruit shining through with more depth.
A good one but not great still. At $8 it's hard to complain, but we always expect a lot of value from the Costco Malbecs. For $7, we'd still argue for the Kirkland Malbec as the better buy.
CostcoWineBlog.com Rating: 87 points
Costco item number: 1371092
Purchased at Costco in: Atlanta, GA (Kennesaw)
Alc. 14.0%
Andrew Jacobs says
I'm not sure what Wine Enthusiast's deal is nowadays, but they seem to always be 3-5 points higher than what I'd consider more "serious" wine reviewers and publications. So, as a rule of thumb, subtract a good few points from whatever WE landed on and you'll have a realistic score.
Jennifer Brose says
I tried this wine a few weeks back and it didn’t do anything for me. May just be my palate, but most Malbecs I find at Costco are underwhelming no matter what publication scores them.