Wine of the week: Domaine du Théron Prestige 2011

An inexpensive French malbec that is somehow fruity and earthy

One reason so little malbec is reviewed on the blog is that the cheap stuff, full of fakey sweet black fruit, isn’t worth reviewing, and the expensive stuff often isn’t worth the price. So when the PR type swore to me that the French Domaine du Theron was a malbec worth reviewing, I accepted the challenge.

She was right. The Domaine du Therom Prestige ($15, sample, 13%), from the Cahors region in southwestern France, combines malbec’s varietal fruitiness with a certain French style. Call it terroir and be glad: It’s a delicious red wine where there’s just enough funky woodsy character to play off the traditional malbec fruit (blueberry? black cherry?) so that the latter doesn’t overwhelm the former.

It’s also a surprisingly rich wine that will age over the next three to five years, getting a little leaner as it gets older but without losing all the fruit. How often can we say that about a $15 wine? And it’s worth noting that this is a $15 wine that is worth $15, unlike the premiumized junk being foisted off on us by so many others.

This is red meat wine – roast lamb, smoked duck, even a pot roast as the weather cools off. It offers an intriguing contrast to the best made fruit forward Argentine malbecs, showing the differences between New World and Old World styles.