2010 Bodegas Poesia Mendoza

The 2010 Poesia was bottled by the Garçin-Léveque family after they bought it in 2013. The wine has a very attractive bouquet with blackberry, raspberry and light minty, lavender-tinged nose. Well defined and fresh. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannins, fine acidity and moderate complexity with brambly red fruit. It tapers a little towards the soy-tinged finish, a little leaner than other vintages, but it is drinking perfectly now. Tasted at the Poesia vertical in Saint-Émilion.

Lots of blackberry and black-cherry aromas follow through to a medium body and firm and silky tannins. Drink or hold.

The 2010 Poesia has a strict linear bouquet with dark berries, briary, wild hedgerow and crushed stone. It is tightly wound but already displays great delineation. The palate is medium-bodied with a crisp, supple entry. There is great purity here, very fine balance and perhaps overall, it will be a more feminine, refined Poesia than the previous vintage. This offers great potential. Drink 2014-2020+. Bodega Poesia was founded in 2000, when Helene Garcin-Leveque was seeking a property of her own (her family is the proprietor of Clos l’Eglise in Pomerol among others.) She discovered a small vineyard located between Mendel and Cheval des Andes: 13-hectares of Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, the latter planted on its own rootstock in 1935. The vineyard is comprised of four rows of vines interpolated by a row of olive trees that Helene thought looked like a Garden of Eden and so she christened it “Poesia,” “poetry” in Spanish. Since the inaugural 2001, the wine has been made in a rented winery; however, they use their own vats and barrels during vinification. Helene’s husband, Patrice, flies down regularly to oversee the vineyard and vinify the wines, and for the last two years he has enlisted the consultancy of the father of Santiago Mayorga (winemaker at Mendel). The goal is to make a high end wine and to make “the terroir speak.” The vines are cultivated organically, although they are not seeking certification, and they harvest early but ripe in order to capture the acidity, which hovers around a pH of 3.75. The “Clos des Andes” is designed to show the best Malbec on their property, where they feel that the fruit is “less heavy.” It is hand-harvested and fermented in wooden, stainless steel and concrete tanks (50-80 hectoliters in size). After a long cuvaison, the wine undergoes partial malolactic in barrel and then sees 40% to 60% new oak in 300-liter barrels rather than 225 liters. Various importers.