Winemaker Notes
Highly recommended with red meats, lamb, veal, and pork chops.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Incredible wine with blackberry, dried meat, granite, spice, and blueberry character. Full body, super velvety texture, yet incredibly fine and long. Such finesse and balance. Clearly the benchmark for syrah in South America. So gorgeous to drink now but will age beautifully.
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Wine Enthusiast
One of Chile's ripest, most full-bodied Syrahs needs more time to fully strut its stuff. Aromas of graphite and coconut are prominent on a lush, boldly fruited bouquet. A highly concentrated palate allows for deep digging, while flavors of blackberry, black plum and raw oak turn savory and spicy as this breathes. An inky, powerful finish is appropriate. Drink through 2022.
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Wine Spectator
Deeply flavored, rich and intense, with concentrated flavors of dark plum, raspberry, blackberry and chocolate mousse. Well-structured, featuring a long finish that oozes Asian spice and notes of hot stone and white pepper. Drink now through 2020.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Even the Syrah, the 2012 Montes Folly, felt a little mainstream and shy -- not really showing much varietal character when poured. There is ripe fruit, black rather than red, and some balsamic aromas, quite oaky; after all, it spent 18 months in wood. The palate is full-bodied, juicy and round, warm with glossy tannins and a sweet, fruit-driven finish. 30,000 bottles produced.
Marked by an unmistakable deep purple hue and savory aromatics, Syrah makes an intense, powerful and often age-worthy red. Native to the Northern Rhône, Syrah achieves its maximum potential in the steep village of Hermitage and plays an important component in the Red Rhône Blends of the south, adding color and structure to Grenache and Mourvèdre. Syrah is the most widely planted grape of Australia and is important in California and Washington. Sommelier Secret—Such a synergy these three create together, the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre trio often takes on the shorthand term, “GSM.”
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.