Garage Wine Co. Pirque Vineyard Lot 90 Cabernet Franc 2017
-
Robert
Parker
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Nose of crushed raspberries and flowers. Notable freshness from being mountain-grown with blue fruit aromas, something minty, leafy, touch of balsamic– a little wild, medium-bodied with very fine tannins, a fine texture and elegant.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I retasted the pure Cabernet Franc 2017 Pirque Vineyard, which seems to have calmed down its minty and creamy Maipo Cabernet personality in this last year and a half. It comes from a vineyard planted in the 1980s in Pirque at around 700 meters in altitude. They treat this like their other single-vineyard wines, with fermentation in open-top vats with indigenous yeasts and punching down, trying to control the power. They picked this a little earlier and managed to bottle a wine with 14% alcohol and good freshness. 4,071 bottles were filled from 14 barrels in January 2019. This is their 90th wine, marked Lot #90. Better than I anticipated.
Cabernet Franc, a proud parent of Cabernet Sauvignon, is the subtler and more delicate of the Cabernets. Today Cabernet Franc produces outstanding single varietal wines across the wine-producing world. Somm Secret—One of California's best-kept secrets is the Happy Canyon appellation of Santa Barbara. Here Cabernet Franc shines as a single varietal wine or in blends, expressing sumptuous fruit, savory aromas and polished tannins.
The Maipo Valley is Chile’s most famous wine region. Set in the country’s Central Valley, it is warm and quite dry, often necessitating the use of irrigation. Alluvial soils predominate but are supplemented with loam and clay.
The climate in Maipo is best-suited for ripe, full-bodied reds like Cabernet Sauvignon (the region’s most widely planted grape), Merlot, Syrah and Carmenère, a Bordeaux variety that has found a successful home in Chile.
White wines are also produced with great prosperity, especially near the cooler coast, include Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.