Always on the hunt for a good cheap red wine, we were recently at our local Smith’s grocery store and noticed they were running a 20% off four bottles of wine promo.
Of course, that meant it was time to sample some new wines!
Since Riley is a big fan of malbecs, we picked up this Alamos Malbec from 2020 with special interest in the promised notes of blackberries and dark cherries.
I thought we were getting a steal of a deal at $8.79 after the discount, only to discover that our local Total Wine & More always sells this for $8.97 a bottle.
Oh well!
My Initial Thoughts
While I do enjoy a good malbec, it’s not my favorite type of red wine as I don’t prefer dry reds.
However, this one does go down pretty smooth, which is nice for the money.
But I do have to say that I’ve had better malbecs.
While Riley initially enjoyed this 2020 Alamos Malbec, after a second pouring she decided that it would not be something she’d chose to buy again.
I had a similar experience with the first glass tasting better to me than the subsequent ones, which isn’t a normal wine drinking experience for me.
Though apparently it’s not just me!
One review left on the Total Wine & More website about this vintage reads –
…drink it the day you open it. It doesn’t taste near as good the second or third day.
That is 100% my experience with this bottle of Alamos Malbec.
What strikes me odd about the flavor of this malbec is that it almost tastes a bit sour – as if it is on the verge of going bad.
And maybe that is exactly what’s going on.
Maybe we just ended up with a bad bottle.
Though after reading some other reviews of this vintage, it appears that bitterness is just one of the flavor notes you can expect to experience from a bottle of Alamos Malbec.
Over at Vivino, it currently has a rating of 3.7/5 from over 135,700 reviews currently.
Though I did notice that that 1990 vintage rates the highest, with the 2020 vintage coming in at a 3.8 from over 6,200 reviews.
For us though, this wine is a definite ‘no’ and not something that we will be purchasing again…unless we forget that we’ve already had it!
Even at $8.99, I don’t think I’d ever buy this one again because I’ve had cheap malbec wines that taste better.
And I’d really like to be able to enjoy this one since it has a low price and is so easy to find in our local area.
Overall though, I think this is quite bad for a malbec wine as a result of the bitterness.
And that’s a shame since malbec tends to be Riley’s favorite type of red wine these days.