Originally Posted by
Gaucho100K
For $17 retail, my guess is that it was most probably an Amalaya brand, all of the stuff from the "full" Colome portfolio are going to be at least in the mid $20ies per bottle (and that is on the "mainland").....
It was bottled under the Hess label, not Amalaya or Colome. I've not seen a Hess-labeled wine that wasn't from California prior to this. I realize that Hess is the multinational corporation that owns all of these labels. It was probably either re-labeled Amalaya production for the U.S, or excess production from Colome estate. I don't know which one, and I don't suppose that it even matters, as they can certainly blend and label and distribute the wines from any of their estates as they see fit (so long as they are in compliance with the laws of the country that the wine is sold in), and the only appellation on the label was that the wine was from Hess' owned vineyards in Salta.
On a related note, I just had a nice and well priced ($12.95 US) Bordeaux blend (all 5 traditional red Bordeaux grapes: 43% CS, 20% PV, 16% Merlot, 16% Malbec, 5% CF) from the 2009 vintage from the label Glen Carlou, which is an estate under the Hess portfolio located in the Paarl region of South Africa. It was interesting in that blends of all 5 Bordeaux grapes, especially with significant amount of Petit Verdot, are not common in the U.S. at this sort of price point.