With its saturated violet hue, aromas and flavours of black cherries and milk chocolate, ripe, velvety tannins and full body, it epitomises the New World style in red wines.
It's exactly what hedonistic wine fans want.
Oh, and it's cheap giving the bang-for-buck we parsimonious pleasure-seekers demand.
Some compare malbec to pizza or sex, in that even when it's bad, it's pretty good. A critic for The London Telegraph, cutely but aptly, called malbec "a warm bear hug of a wine."
Malbec is no tannic steak wine. Its voluptuous richness makes it a comfort wine for comfort foods - beef stews, coq au vin, macaroni and cheese, lasagna, burritos, hamburgers or chilli - be it red bean, beef or chicken.
With a bit of nerve, you could serve it at dessert with chocolate brownies or sliced strawberries with balsamic vinegar on ice cream.
Malbec's history is complex. It's not native to Argentina; it's somewhat accidental that it's there at all.
From at least the Middle Ages, malbec was a minor blending grape in France - locally called noir - used to add colour, spice and fruit to Bordeaux's fabled red blends. It was used as a single grape in wine only in Cahors, south of Bordeaux, where it produced a rustic, somewhat gamey wine drunk mostly by locals.
Then in the mid-1800s, Argentine President Domingo Faustino Sermiento decided to upgrade his country's vineyards, and hired the French agronomist Michel Pouget. For reasons unknown Pouget chose malbec to bring to Argentina for that purpose.
But he was right. Malbec quickly proved everything the French have always said about the importance of terroir, or climate, in growing grapes. Planted 900 metres up or more in the Andes foothills around the city of Mendoza, it grew extra ripe in the intense, high-altitude, thin-atmosphere sun so bright that some growers cast nets over the vines to prevent sunburn. Malbec's skins also grew thicker from that sun, and skins are where the flavour lies.
Cahors today is recognising what Argentina has done with its modest grape, and is scrambling to catch up.
California winemakers, recognising a good thing, are investing in Argentina to make malbec to sell back home.
Argentine wineries, while recognising the value of low priced malbecs, also are working to create finer, more complex malbecs to sell at premium prices.
Bodega Achaval Ferrer, near Mendoza, for example, has created Quimera - a blend of 31 per cent malbec, 27 per cent cabernet sauvignon, 20 per cent merlot, 18 per cent cabernet franc and four per cent petit verdot styled after France's famous Bordeaux reds, at $US56 ($A60.58).
Still, malbec's primary appeal - at least to the financially challenged - is that, if you have only a few bucks to spend on a red wine, malbec may be your best choice.
