Winemaker Notes
Light ruby. Complex and layered, dominated by red cherries and a hint of black tea leaves. It nicely blends the red clay's structure and soil's minerality.
Pair with charcuterie, funghi porcini risotto and grilled zucchini.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very floral expression of pinot with lavender, chalk and ashes to the red cherries and red berries. Plenty of red fruit on the palate with some fine, chalky tannins and a saline, mineral finish. Around 40% whole bunches. 15% new oak barrels and others are second- or third-use. Marcelo Papa says they are reducing the amount the new oak.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The varietal 2021 Amelia Pinot Noir was produced with grapes from Quebrada Seca in Limarí on colluvial soils with limestone. It fermented with around 40% full clusters (this has grown) in open-top vats and matured in Burgundy oak barrels, 18% of them new, for one year. It has 13.9% alcohol and a pH of 3.7. 2021 was a cooler year, and the wine shows it, even if the coastal part of Limarí cushions the effect of the warmer years (like 2020, which was a lot less warm here than in inland parts of Chile; I retasted the 2020 to check the evolution, which is great). It's crunchy and has the nervosity from the stems, floral, perfumed and elegant. It is textured and fresh, varietal, bright and young.
Rating: 95+ -
Vinous
The 2021 Pinot Noir Amelia comes from the Quebrada Seca vineyard in the Limarí Valley. It was fermented in steel tanks as much as 50% in whole bunches and the rest destemmed and aged for 12 months in 18% new French oak Burgundy barrels. A bright ruby-red in the glass. The pure, fruity nose presents sweet and sour cherry notes as well as damp earth and gentle herbal aromas. Dry and silky in the mouth, the lean, chalky palate is austere in texture but full of flavor. A skeletal Pinot Noir with lasting fruity flavor. Will grow in the bottle.
Founded in 1883, Vina Concha y Toro is Latin America's leading producer and occupies an outstanding position among the world’s most important wine companies, currently exporting to 135 countries worldwide. Uniquely, it owns around 9,500 hectares of prime vineyards, which allows the company to secure the highest quality grapes for its wine production. Concha y Toro's portfolio includes a wide range of successful brands at every price point, from the top of the range Don Melchor and Almaviva to the flagship brand Casillero del Diablo and innovative stand-alone brands such as Palo Alto and Maycas del Limarí. The company has 3,162 employees and is headquartered in Santiago, Chile.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Part of the Coquimbo region and a key location for pisco production, the Limari Valley is one of the northern most wine producing regions of Chile. The other two, also part of Coquimbo, are the Elqui and less-developed Choapa Valleys. While more vineyard area is dedicated to pisco production (via the grapes of Muscat of Alexandria, Pedro Jimenez, Moscatel de Asturia and Torontel), the acreage under vine for still wine production has increased. The intense sunlight in the Limari Valley, coupled with little rainfall as well as the cooling effect of the Humboldt Current from the Pacifc Ocean, all make the area ideal for cool climate grapes like Chardonnay and Pinot noir.