$10.99/bottle
Purchased at Thunder Road Wine & Spirits, Knoxville
It’s a new year and time for me to try something new…not wine, of course, I’ve had that before…but writing about wine. A bit of resume-ical history: I started smoking cigars in 2001 and I knew what I liked pretty soon after that, but I still didn’t decide to start writing about them until 7 years later. It would have been a bit presumptuous to pretend I had any authority writing on them before then…hell, there are times now when I have a tenuous grasp on authority when writing about cigars! I soon after started talking about my experiences with distilled beverages, especially as paired with cigars, and a big part of that was a regular enjoyment of that pairing. But wine and beer was something that I never paid a lot of attention to. I enjoy some beer, but not enough to spend a great deal of time and/or money hunting down the latest microbrew, or trying to one-up everybody on “Untappd.” And wine was almost never on my radar. Until the employee Christmas dinner for Burns Tobacconist last month, when I had a red wine that I found unbelievably good. I’m not talking about that wine today, although I probably will sometime soon. While looking for that wine at a liquor store in Knoxville, I found another that I had to pick up: Cigar Box.
The label tells the story best:
When the first vintage of this wine was made, our winemaker noticed subtle hints of “Cigar Box” on the nose…the name stuck! Sourced from a single vineyard, the grapes for this wine are bunch selected and hand harvested. This Malbec displays aromas of ripe plum and violets along with subtle hints of vanilla. A soft silky finish balances the rich, weighty mouth feel. This is quintessential Mendoza in a glass! Drink this wine with grilled meat or salmon, or alone in your room with the door locked…you are the boss!
It’s a little cold at this time of year for grilled meat or salmon and I’m entirely uneasy about locking myself in a room with this bottle of wine (o_O), but I’ll definitely see how it goes with a couple of nice cigars. The front of the bottle notes that this is “Hand Harvested” and of a 2012 vintage. It is 14.1% alcohol by volume and I paid about $10 for this 750ml bottle.
This is my first Malbec, at least that I can remember, so I decided to do a bit of research on Wikipedia. Malbec is a purple grape variety, used in making red wines, and is one of six grapes allowed in blending Bordeaux wine. It is grown in France, mostly in the South West of the country, but is also “celebrated as an Argentine varietal wine” and that is where this wine comes from. The back of the bottle verbiage mentioned Mendoza, which is a high altitude wine region in Argentina, which provides the country’s mostly highly rated Malbecs.
In the glass, the Cigar Box has an upfront aroma of fruit—grape, of course, but also a bit of pear—with secondary notes of cedar—thus, the cigar box. Taking a small sip, I noted that the wine was fairly dry, though not so much as many reds I have had. The fruit sweetness continued on the palate with moderately sweet blackberry notes at first, fading to pear and more cedar on the finish. Regarding what was stated on the label, plums are not something I’m familiar with, so what I took for pear might have been that; I’ve never munched on violets, so I’m really not sure what they taste like. There was a slight vanilla note hidden in the woodiness, but I only noticed it when really looking for it. This is probably a good time to add that I’m not a wine connoisseur—I’m just reporting what I experienced.
I paired the Malbec the first time with a Fuente Añejo and the second time with a Tatuaje Noellas Reserva. Both use Connecticut Broadleaf wrappers (yes, I’m still on a Broadleaf kick), and I tried out a CAO Brazilia (also with a dark Maduro wrapper, this time Arapiraca). All three went quite well with the wine, though I’d probably have to give the edge to the Brazilia in this case.
This article originally appeared on Tiki Bar Online.
