velvety and sweet tasting. it just leaves you wanting more

Very nice!!! Tasted Sepetember 2012.

Very easy drinking Malbec.

The aromas on this wine are pretty muted, after 12 months in French and American oak and about 5 years in bottle; blueberry, blackberry, tobacco, leather, pencil shaving and vanilla. The mouthfeel is thick, velvety and sweet with well integrated tannins. The finish is long, with concentrated fruit and earthy. All and all, enjoyable, great with BBQ meat. Only negative, I am not a fan of synthetic cork, a wine which spends this amount of time in bottle needs a real cork or quality Stelvin cap.

The 2004 Cicchitti Gran Reserva Malbec is a powerful full bodied wine full of oak, black berry and plum notes, with good tannins and acidity – that is if you manage to find an unspoiled bottle. I’ve tried 3 bottles of which 2 had notable fungusy/moldy notes. This wine is not corked as the enclosure is a plastic one. There is a quite a bit of sediment and the wine must be decanted. The LCBO has released it now 4 times – July 9th, 2011; August 4th, 2012; November 9th, 2013 and most recently (probably not the last) December 6th, 2014 keeping the price the same at $21.95 in the first three releases and adding a $1 in the latest one. Malbec from 2004 seems like a good buy, but don’t be fooled. An unfortunate wine tale that most likely can all be attributed to a plastic enclosure that is simply not doing its job. Tasted in Jan/15.

See my wine recommendations readily available at the LCBO here:

http://grapeselections.com/grapeselections

or here @

http://www.winealign.com/wino/dantrcka/recommended-wines-you-can-still-buy