2021 Mr Grant Malbec *

Malbec 99%. Cab Franc 1%. This is the first release of this wine and certainly won’t be the last. This is powerful stuff. Ripe, concentrated fruit and that glorious shade of inky magenta that only Malbec can provide. Juby notes of redcurrant and salted red plum, with a lightly woven knit of spice and musk lolly. Cardamon, cinnamon and ruby red fruits – it’s like a journey down the silk route full of heady opulence and swaying bejewelled rose hips. Tannins are chewy and morish, they are weighted perfectly in line with the power of the fruit which is gently nestled in 60% new oak. It seems sizeable, but this fruit can hold it with ease. One of those wines you sip and forget to spit.

A whole lot of blue and black fruit, some violet perfume, and no shortage of creamy mocha oak, also some iodine and crushed dried herbs. It’s full-bodied, rich in flavour, a Turkish coffee feel to tannin, chocolaty oak, dried blueberry and raspberry, lavish silty tannin to close, with oak and fruit having a fair old crack at each other, though the density of the fruit is probably the winner. It’s a bold wine, inky and ferrous, with no shortage of stuffing. It’s a throaty, almost Napa style of wine, and kind of showy in that way, though there’s no doubt it’s high quality.

This is joyous. A round, floral, deeply weighted and resinous malbec. The classy French oak (60% new) harnesses lilac, blueberry confiture and a slick of licorice, mulberry and bramble. The oak is present, yet embedded beautifully. While far from profound, there is a great deal to enjoy here, with the signature of class that one expects from this address. Will age effortlessly across the mid-term.