Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon 2007
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Winemaker Notes
Color: Bright ruby-red. Bouquet: Expressive and complex chocolate, black cherry and ripe plum mingle with coffee and cassis. Taste: Red fruit features in a dense, full-bodied wine whose fine, ripe tannins lead into a big, long and juicy finish.
Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon is appropriate with any hearty dish, especially lamb and steak.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2007 Don Melchor (98% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Cabernet Franc) was sourced from the Puente Alto Vineyard in Maipo at over 2100 feet of elevation. The wine was aged for 15 months in 78% new French oak. It sports an incipiently complex bouquet of toasty oak, pencil lead, exotic spices, incense, violets, and black currant, and blackberry. Structured and styled much like a classified growth Medoc, it has the balance to evolve for at least 6-8 years. Patience will be required because this tightly wound effort has much more to reveal. It should be most memorable when it attains its peak.
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Wine Spectator
Still a touch tight, but dense, focused and layered, with well-integrated structure underneath loam, blackberry, espresso, tobacco and sage notes. The long finish has nice drive, with the loam edge stretching out. This has the poise and balance for cellaring. Drink now through 2017.
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Wine Enthusiast
Deep, a bit reduced on the nose, and full as can be, with blackberry, cassis and prune aromas. The palate is super rich and concentrated, and frankly a bit heady. Flavors of burnt brown sugar, toast, tobacco, pepper and baked berry fruits are delicious, and the finish is dense and long. Drinkable now but best in another two to four years. This marks the 20th anniversary of Concha y Toro's Don Melchor Cabernet.
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Wine & Spirits
Enrique Tirado blends Concha y Toro's top cabernet from a terrace above the Maipo River, where the vines were planted in the mid-1970s. The warm 2007 vintage produced a robust and generous Don Melchor, succulent in its blackberry jam flavors accompanied by mocha notes. It’s a powerful wine to drink now with roast lamb or to cellar for at least three years.
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Wine
Don Melchor, named after Concha Y Toro’s founder, is among Chile’s most-acclaimed wines and a Cabernet that belongs in every conversation about world-class interpretations of this singular varietal. Winemaker Enrique Tirado says of his vision for the wine, “Don Melchor’s style, complexity, and elegance are the extension of the perfect balance between the rocky soils in Puente Alto, the cold winds that slide down from the Andes Mountains, the generous climate of the Maipo Valley, the number of years the vines have taken to yield their best grapes, and the meticulous and caring work of the human hand.”
The signature wine from the exquisitely tended Puente Alto vineyard, Don Melchor celebrates its 30th vintage with the 2016 release. Set at the foot of the Andes Mountains on the northern banks of the Maipo River in the Upper Maipo Valley, 650 meters above sea level, the vineyard dates back to the mid-19th century, when the first pre-phylloxera French varieties were brought to Chile. Today, the vineyard consists of 127 hectares, divided into seven parcels, 90% of which are Cabernet Sauvignon, 7.1% are Cabernet Franc, 1.9% are Merlot, and 1% are Petit Verdot. Each parcel has been subdivided in order for very specific, detailed work that responds to the particular needs of each plant, row by row, to achieve the perfect balance with the weather characteristics of each year. Average vine age is over 30 years.
Every year, Winemaker Enrique Tirado travels to the small town of Lamarque, Bordeaux, France, to meet with renowned Bordeaux consultant Eric Boissenot, to taste approximately 150 lots from the vineyard and determine which lots, and in which proportions, will go into the new vintage of Don Melchor. Once the final blend has been defined, the new vintage of Don Melchor is transferred to French oak barrels from the Allier, Tronçois, and Nevers forests. Nearly two-thirds of the barrels are new, and the remaining third have had one prior use. After 14–15 months, the wine is bottled and aged for another year to develop the complexity and elegance that Don Melchor is known for.
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
Dramatic geographic and climatic changes from west to east make Chile an exciting frontier for wines of all styles. Chile’s entire western border is Pacific coastline, its center is composed of warm valleys and on its eastern border, are the soaring Andes Mountains.
Chile’s central valleys, sheltered by the costal ranges, and in some parts climbing the eastern slopes of the Andes, remain relatively warm and dry. The conditions are ideal for producing concentrated, full-bodied, aromatic reds rich in black and red fruits. The eponymous Aconcagua Valley—hot and dry—is home to intense red wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Merlot.
The Maipo, Rapel, Curicó and Maule Valleys specialize in Cabernet and Bordeaux Blends as well as Carmenère, Chile’s unofficial signature grape.
Chilly breezes from the Antarctic Humboldt Current allow the coastal regions of Casablanca Valley and San Antonio Valley to focus on the cool climate loving varieties, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.
Chile’s Coquimbo region in the far north, containing the Elqui and Limari Valleys, historically focused solely on Pisco production. But here the minimal rainfall, intense sunlight and chilly ocean breezes allow success with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The up-and-coming southern regions of Bio Bio and Itata in the south make excellent Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
Spanish settlers, Juan Jufre and Diego Garcia de Cáceres, most likely brought Vitis vinifera (Europe’s wine producing vine species) to the Central Valley of Chile sometime in the 1550s. One fun fact about Chile is that its natural geographical borders have allowed it to avoid phylloxera and as a result, vines are often planted on their own rootstock rather than grafted.