Winemaker Notes
Maquis Franco is Chile's great Cabernet Franc. Under the guidance of renowned master blender, Jacques Boissenot, Maquis has produced a 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.
Blend: 94% Cabernet Franc, 6% Cabernet Sauvignon
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Youthful nose with plenty of tobacco leaves and a touch of iron to the ripe cassis. A little more intensity and generosity compared with 2018, but still quite refined and classy. The medium- to full-bodied palate is charged with compact but polished tannins. A pretty poised, long and layered cab franc. Drinkable now but can hold very well.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The top Cabernet Franc 2019 Franco, a wine they have produced since 2008, was produced with 94% Cabernet Franc and 6% Cabernet Sauvignon from ungrafted vines from a massal selection planted in alluvial soils with 2.5 meters of clay. The wine achieved 14.3% alcohol after fermenting with selected yeasts, and it matured in French oak barrels, 25% to 30% of them new, for 24 months. This is expressive, harmonious and elegant, with contained ripeness and extraction, and under normal circumstances (i.e., tasting just one vintage on its own), I might not have noticed how the tannins don't achieve the level of refinement of those from the 2018 that I tasted next to it. Time in bottle will do it good.
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.