- 93 Points INTL WINE REPORT
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- 90 Points Jeb Dunnuck
- 90 Points Wine Advocate
- 90 Points Vinous
Malbec
Estate Bottled | Red Mountain
- Vineyards 100% Sunset Bench
- Composition: 95% Malbec, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon
In 15 years, Malbec grew from a 2-acre experiment to Kiona’s fifth-most-planted cultivar on Red Mountain. The grape thrives here, producing wines of uncommon depth and complexity. The fruit is highly sought after by Washington winemakers for its strong varietal typicity and opaque coloration – demand continues to outpace supply. Observant Kiona followers know that Sunset Bench vineyard features in many of our current and former wines, but always as a blending component. This 2019 Malbec represents the first time we’ve featured the site as a 100%, single-vineyard estate offering. It’s a higher-elevation vineyard well suited to the cultivar.
Malbec was “discovered” by the new world wine-drinking public as a superb stand-alone culti- var for fruit-forward, dark, approachable wines with lots of depth. This certainly holds true on Red Mountain, where the wines tend to exhibit a softer, svelte tannin profile. Of the Bordeaux red cultivars grown in our region, Malbec stands out as being particularly tasty in its youth and equally at ease with food or by itself.