I used to live in Buenos Aires, Argentina so I’m a quite familiar with the wines coming from there. Those were the days, when a good malbec cost the equivalent of 3 or 4 US dollars.

Well, the good times can’t last forever and after a year I left Buenos Aires but I still appreciate a good malbec when I drink one. As is often the case, the best stuff hardly ever leaves the country but I was able to sample the Bodega Septima’s 2008 Septimo Dia Malbec recently at an all steak dinner served up by the good folks of A la Cruz Argentine steakhouse in Clerkenwell.

Bodega Septima is part of the Codorniu group of wineries and was the seventh one to be obtained by Codorniu in 1999. The majority of their vineyards are located in Lujan de Cujo in the region of Mendoza and their star wine is of course the Malbec. The Septimo Dia  2008 Malbec has as it label a picture of an angel reclining, as in, the seventh day is a day of rest.

The 2008 Septimo Dia Malbec is 100% Malbec, medium bodied for an Argentine Malbec, full of jammy black fruits with a lovely violet note to it and  a pronounced chocolate finish, very round and generous tannins: quite an elegant Malbec, the fruit and oak were perfectly balanced.

The finish was long and intense and the best thing about it was that it was such a great food wine. The fruit was not overpowering. I wouldn’t call it one of those “fruit-forward” wines that they are so fond of in the New World, however, the fruit was in attendance but not the star of the show. This is a wine made for steak, there is no getting around that. We had it with mini-sirloin sandwiches and despite the fact that I’d already had 4 courses of steak, it was still delicious and very difficult to pass this wine up for the next one!

This wine and Bodega Septima‘s range of both red and white wines are on the winelist at A La Cruz steakhouse in Clerkenwell, London.