A genial, suave red from Uruguay

published 1 May 2009

2006 LYM Tannat, Gimenez Mendez, Las Brujas, Montevideo, Uruguay (£136.95 including VAT and delivery for a case of 12 bottles, the Maidenhead Wine Company, 01628-411273, www.maidenheadwine.co.uk ).

I have never, in my 22-year life in the wine trade, written up a wine from Uruguay. I have tasted many hearty reds, most made from the muscular tannat grape, and always felt they lacked dexterity and charm, bullying your taste buds and overloading them with tannin.

So when I tasted LYM, I was amazed to find a genial and suave tannat in my glass. I let it breathe for hours and even tasted it the following day. It kept expanding and unravelling in the glass. This superb red is a tribute to the French Basques who settled in Uruguay, bringing their local tannat variety with them centuries ago.

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This is a dark wine and one with a chocolatey, plummy core, but it is the density and depth which impresses most because it does it without becoming overbearing. When carmenre took root in Chile and malbec made its way to Mendoza in Argentina, I bet the other South Americans felt confident they had picked their grapes well. With this wine, the Uruguayans have finally caught up.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year.

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years.

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.