Score: 92/100
Familia Schroeder’s estate is located in San Patricio del Chañar Valley at 39º South Latitude, 53 km. far from Neuquen City, in plains of northern Patagonia Argentina. The climate in this extreme terroir is characterized by frequent winds, high day-night temperature variations and long summer days.
Learn more about this wine’s origin at Patagonia wine region, Argentina
The Saurus and Saurus Select range of wines were named as a tribute to the recent discovery of fossils from a new species of dinosaurs in Patagonia. The Titanosaurus, an enormous 80-ton dinosaur that weighed about 80 tons, the equivalent of 14 grown elephants, dwarfed even the Argentinosaurus, the previous largest known species of Dinosaur on Earth.
As its name indicates, after a 4-5-day cold maceration, this Barrel-Fermented Malbec went through a fermentation in oak wine barrels, followed by a maturation for about 8 months, all in new oak.
Tasting Notes
This Argentina Malbec wine, as the style most-often implies, comes in a very dark red color, dark and deep red to the core, intense red to the rim.
The nose is, straight from the first smell, equally intense. Initially filled with meaty aromas, like cured meat or dried sausage, it brightens up after swirling the wine and a little aeration time, to give room to intense ripe red berry aromas and berry jam scents. Ripe blackberry and cherry jam are happily joined by lifted white pepper notes.
It’s voluptuous, deep, and intensely spicy and fruity to smell at!
On the palate, this Malbec strikes by its sheer flavors concentration, all delivered with smoothness and a certain refinement.
Your palate is filled with a rich, opulent and quite oily a body, yet giving an impression of great tension from plenty of mineral acidity.
Tannins are soft and velvety. The wine feels overall dry, but includes a slightly-sweet juiciness to its taste from explosive red berry jam flavors that are very pungent and make you salivate.
The peppery spiciness detected on the nose is there on the palate as well, bringing a subtle chili-like feel. But the sweet and oaky spices such as clove and nutmeg are the outstanding feature providing a sweet/savory edge to the wine in combination with juicy vinosity.
Probably from the barrel-fermentation that generally results in a softer, better-integrated oak flavor, the clear oaky notes are elegant and refined. Quite discrete all along the tasting except for the very notable clove character. They give plenty of vanilla and caramel tones to the finish, a touch of wood smokiness as well.
Overall
A juicy and very opulent Argentinian Malbec, delivering all the expected richness, from ripe red berry fruits, loads of spiciness, and a meaty/salty juiciness.
Yet, being Patagonian, so from a cooler climate than most Argentina Malbec we taste (like Mendoza or San Juan), it is lively and elegantly acidic, delivering its concentration and power with a relative finesse, helped by an oaky and rather deep complexity.
Enjoy 
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