Cabernet Sauvignon from Mendoza, Argentina

Purchase Price $16.99

Vinous 91, James Suckling 90, Wilfred Wong 90, Wine Enthusiast 87, ElsBob 88

ABV 14.0%

A deep ruby to deep purple full-bodied wine. Black fruit and oak on the nose and cherries on the tongue. A lasting tannic finish.

A very good fine wine but don’t pay more than $12-13. Current prices range from $18-34.

Trivia: Today Mendoza evokes vineyards and wine. But before the grape, before the Jesuits, before the Spaniards, before the Incas, there were the Huarpe people. In the Andean shadows of the setting sun, settlement was about water, trade, and brute survival on the high plains of an arid frontier.

The Huarpes lived in the Huentota Valley (modern Mendoza), the Uco Valley, and parts of San Juan. Masters of irrigation, they engineered acequias: canals that diverted river water to sustain maize, beans, squash, and, through trade, potatoes. Their skill made agriculture possible in an otherwise dry landscape, and the legacy of those canals still shapes Mendoza’s tree‑lined streets today.

These acequias, often several feet deep, were carved in the pre‑metal age with bone and wooden digging sticks: a testament to persistence and communal labor in a harsh environment.