Winemaker Notes
Blend: 72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 19% Carmenere, 6% Cabernet Franc, 3% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is such a beautifully nuanced red with tobacco, dried herbs, wet earth and currants. Some leather and rose petals, too. Full-bodied and chewy, yet refined with great polish. It’s rich and intense at the same time. Very focused center palate. Broad layers of tannin and fruit. A blend of 72% cabernet sauvignon, 19% carmenere, 6% cabernet franc and 3% petit verdot. Better after 2024, but already a joy to taste.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Almaviva to be the most complex, nuanced and multifaceted version of Almaviva to date. It presents a perfectly balanced nose of black and red fruits, pipe tobacco, fresh mint, gravel dust and an enticing, harmonious hint of red peppers that gives the wine its distinctiveness. The palate displays understated ripeness with fantastic density and concentration while maintaining a sense of vibrancy. It finishes with a long, layered finish that highlights the paradoxes of a great wine: drying yet refreshing, lifted yet deep, straightforward yet slightly mysterious. This wine has it all and should continue to impress into its third decade.
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Decanter
Confident complexity on display here, fresh, powerful spicy notes of tobacco and grilled coffee beans alongside cool blueberry fruits. Winemaker Michel Friou has made a brilliant wine in this vintage that expands outwards through the palate. 100% new oak. Blend completed with 3% Petit Verdot.
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Tasting Panel
This label is a partnership between the Rothschild family and Concha y Toro. Softly aromatic nose, lush garnet color, and a velvety texture, with crisp acidity and a complex blend of flavors defined by plum, spice, and herbs. A splendid
Bordeaux-style red blend—equal parts rich, deep, and delicious.
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Wine & Spirits
A joint venture between Baron Philippe de Rothschild and Concha y Toro, Almaviva is centered on a prime piece of real estate above the north bank of the Maipo River. The 2018 blends cabernet sauvignon (72 percent) and carmenère (19 percent); the balance is cabernet franc and petit verdot. Aged 18 months in new French oak barrels, this wine has the refinement of great Maipo Valley cabernet, providing plump depths of blackcurrant flavor without excess weight. Suited to long aging
Almaviva is the name of both winery and wine born of the joint venture between Baron Philippe de Rothschild and Viña Concha y Toro. It is also that of Pierre de Beaumarchais' character, the "Count of Almaviva" in his Marriage of Figaro, a work Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart later turned into one of the most popular operas ever. The classical epithet, laid out in Pierre de Beaumarchais' fair hand, shares the label with insignia of pre-hispanic roots symbolizing a union of European and American cultures that at every level has created successive bonds over centuries that have evolved a unique identity. The recent synthesis of French tradition and American soil has delivered an exceptional wine embodying the best of both worlds, a Primer Orden that really shines.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
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.