If you’re a wine lover on a budget, then exploring South American wines could make you very happy.  Vintage after vintage, there are quality bottles at great prices.  They do tend to be earthier and less fruit forward than domestic offerings, but if you like a drier style, then there’s much to love. Here are three wines our panel tasted recently:

 

Catena 2015 Malbec

Grape(s): 100% Malbec

Region:Mendoza, Argentina

Price: 15-20

Tasting Notes:

Equal parts blueberry and blackberry blend with expressions of floral earth and vanilla on the nose. Rich, dark flavors of blueberries and bramble berries coalesce around notes of pepper, earth, and vanilla on the palate. Lush fruit is balanced by mouth-filling tannins, making this a wine to open with a hearty chili.

Rating: 90

La Playa 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon

Grape(s): Cabernet

Region: Chile

Price: 5-10

Tasting Notes:

Blackberries, currants, rose petal, and spice come together on the nose. A balance of earthy, herbaceous, and dark fruit flavors take shape on the palate. The tannins are plush but the fruit is reserved making it a good match for a homemade, mild bean and cheese burrito.

Rating: 89

Trivento 2015 Malbec

Grape(s): 100% Malbec

Region:Mendoza, Argentina

Price: 5-10

Tasting Notes:

Plums and cherries come together with elements of earth and chocolate on the nose. Rich fruit envelops the palate, with strawberry, blackberry, and cherry leading the way, as earth, chocolate and vanilla play in the background. Not the bruiting, tannic wine that many Malbecs can be. This is a lighter, less earthy and quite tasty take.

Rating: 90