Maquis Franco Cabernet Franc 2015
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Robert
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James
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Winemaker Notes
Maquis “Franco” is Chile’s great Cabernet Franc. Under the guidance of renowned master blender, Jacques Boissenot, Maquis has produced a 100% Cabernet Franc that is not only an elegant wine to drink now, but will transform as it ages over the next 20 years. The unique seasonal conditions and soils of the Colchagua Valley help to produce a wine with great aromatic intensity and complexity.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I tasted two vintages of the top Cabernet Franc: the 2015 Franco from a warm and dry year and the 2016 from a much cooler and especially wetter year. In 2015, they got good yields, and an early harvest delivered a wine that contains 3% Carmenere and a restrained 13.5% alcohol. It had a soft vinification at controlled temperature, and the élevage was in French barriques and lasted two years. They are advised by Eric Boissenot for the blends. This wine shows the warmer and riper character of the year more than the Caremenere Viola does, and I think the warmer 2015 vintage was better for Carmenere, while the Cabernet Franc behaved better in the cooler 2016 vintage. The fruit here is black rather than red, and it's spicy and juicy with some dusty tannins and a faint earthiness.
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James Suckling
This has a very attractive, fresh red-fruit nose with attractive, leafy and gently herbal notes on offer, too. The palate is sleek, fleshy and focused and the red-berry flavors hold long and crisp.
Other Vintages
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Wine
Enthusiast
The Hurtado family has owned the Viña Maquis vineyard for more than a century, but it wasn’t until almost 20 years ago that the family decided to make their own wine out of the terrific grapes in their own backyard. They built a state-of-the-art gravity flow winery and set out to make the Maquis winery one of the great properties in all of South America.
Located in Colchagua Valley, the winery’s focus is on distinctive single-vineyard, estate wines, as well as producing “balanced” wines that are not over-ripe (resulting in excessively high alcohol) but also not exhibiting any of the “green” character that sometimes plagues wines picked from grapes that have not fully matured. The Maquis main vineyard is essentially an island: it is deeply influenced by the Tinguiririca River on one side and the Chimbarongo Creek on the other. These two large waterways once brought alluvial sediment from the Andes and today act as pathways for cool coastal breezes that help moderate the warm Colchagua summers, contributing to the intensity, character, fruitiness and mineral elements of the Maquis wines. Maquis is fortunate to have such a privileged location.
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.
Well-regarded for intense and exceptionally high quality red wines, the Colchagua Valley is situated in the southern part of Chile’s Rapel Valley, with many of the best vineyards lying in the foothills of the Coastal Range.
Heavy French investment and cutting-edge technology in both the vineyard and the winery has been a boon to the local viticultural industry, which already laid claim to ancient vines and a textbook Mediterranean climate.
The warm, dry growing season in the Colchagua Valley favors robust reds made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenère, Malbec and Syrah—in fact, some of Chile’s very best are made here. A small amount of good white wine is produced from Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.