Tacuil RD Malbec – Cabernet 2022

If you’ve had a bottle of Tacana or Mayuco, then you know winemaker Raúl Dávalos and his bodega at Tacuil. With “RD” (named for his father, of whom it is said that he defended his land from socialist expropriators by welcoming unannounced visitors with a rifle), we add another stellar – yet rarely available – vintage to our collection. If this is your first Dávalos wine, here’s a summary: Raúl’s ancestor, Spanish general Don Nicolás Severo de Isasmendi, first arrived in the Calchaquí Valley during a series of frontier wars of byzantine complexity in their aims and belligerent. He founded what is now the oldest winery in Argentina, with French vines carried over the Andes by his daughter Ascensión. Two hundred years later, in his isolated little valley, Raúl still hews to the old ways – wild yeast, organic grapes, unfiltered, unoaked. This RD is enigmatic on the nose, but full bodied on the palate with classic Calchaquí berries and herbs.