El Esteco Malbec 2019 Fincas Notables Fairtrade review

A nice Argentinean wine that’s also Fairtrade and available from independent wine merchants for around £14-£18 a bottle. Flavours are simple – creamy blackcurrant with some yoghurt sharpness and are easy to like. But this wine only gets a 3-star review, rather than a 4, for its use of an unnecessarily weight of glass bottle – it weighed a massive 900grammes when empty! For comparison most wines come in bottles weighing between 350-450 grammes and only bottles used for sparkling wine come in at 800-900 grammes as the glass on these has to be thicker to withstand the pressure inside from the bubbles. But El Esteco is a still red wine in a bottle that has travelled all the way from the southern hemisphere to the UK – using up extra fuel due to its weight and so carbon emissions etc. This is not a wine with green credentials even if it is Fairtrade. So drink it and then recycle the bottle – it’s all you can do.