2013 Mendel Malbec Lunta Mendoza is sold out.

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2013 Mendel Malbec Lunta Mendoza 750 ml

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  • Curated by unrivaled experts
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  • Temperature controlled shipping options
  • Get credited back if a wine fails to impress

“You can’t make a Rolls Royce out of Yugo parts!”

While the big wine from Mendel, a magnificent proprietary blend called “Unus,” has drawn comparisons to classified-growth Bordeaux, de la Mota’s sensibly priced “Lunta” ranks among Mendoza’s most sophisticated bargains. Here’s why.

In case you aren’t keeping up with the economic situation in Argentina, all you need to do is hop a flight to Buenos Aires to get a bitter taste of the fiscal catastrophe.

Unemployment is said to be 25%, but privately, officials admit many of the unemployed have stopped looking for jobs, and as a result, are no longer even counted. Estimates of the inflation rate vary from 15%-30% depending upon the source. Argentina’s banks are on the ropes and have all but stopped lending. Sielecki couldn’t have been more blunt.

“Mendel is small. Just 7,000 cases. We’re committed to producing world-class wine, but you can’t make a Rolls Royce out of Yugo parts! We drop crop aggressively, and harvest just 2-3 tons per acre, not 6 or 7. Our wines are rich and structured like Bordeaux, so plenty of oxygen exchange in fine-grained new barrels to open up. So we age in French cooperage, which now costs over $1,000 per barrel. As we wait to bottle our wine, due to the inflation rate, the cost of labor, bottles, labels, and capsules goes up 2 to 2.5 percent per MONTH! People ask me all the time how we make money. My answer is always the same. You can’t. You have to take the long view and bet to the future. The present is unforgiving.”

Drawn from mature, ungrafted vines with an average age of 86 years, the chiseled 2013 “Lunta” Malbec is brilliant purple/black in color. More approachable in its youth than the bigger Mendel wines, the aromas are of ripe blackberry and cassis, laced with violets and a hint of tobacco. Rich, wonderfully structured for a Malbec of its price point, voluptuous and mouth-filling on the attack, finishing with the sturdy structure and firm backbone that so impressed both Parker and Kramer.

$26 on release. $15.99 today — the best price in America — exclusively on WineAccess. 92 points from Wines & Spirits. 1,200 bottles are up for grabs.