Have you ever been confused by a wine? Have you ever been so surprised by a wine that it calls into question everything you thought you knew? This precocious offer from Christina Gonzales did that to us, and we couldn’t be happier to share. Christina first found Malbec in 2001 while backpacking across South America. It was in Argentina, next to a large steak, and she left struck by the link between the wine and the food and the community that produced them. After nine years working harvests in California and Oregon, she founded Gonzales Wine Co, and started making her own sort of Malbec. Lighter and brighter and more food friendly, with low alcohol, complex aromas and refreshing textures. This offering from the Cicchini Family Vineyard just east of San Francisco Bay is maybe the most extreme example of this style we’ve ever seen, and it’s frankly amazing. Christina describes it as a ‘white wine in every way except that it’s red’. It absolutely jumps out of its skin with fresh tropical fruit, and at a cool 11% abv, it’s like no kind of Malbec we’ve ever tasted. The wine has aromas of passionfruit, guava, tangerine and mango, white pepper, cranberry, and wild strawberry that you can smell about six feet away from the glass. Light, transparent, and unbearably juicy on the palate, this wine tastes like strawberry-mango punch with a tactile note of orange pith on the finish. Fresh and breezy and unconcerned with the expectations we have for Malbec, this is truly something different!

Christina Gonzales is a firm believer that wine is made in the vineyard, specifically by the Vineyard stewards without whom there would be no wine. She’s on the board of AHIVOY, a nonprofit dedicated to assisting the education and professional development of the people who do the hardest part of winemaking, and too often get the least credit.