Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This rather muscular red opens with elegance and grace, offering peppery floral details that meld with baking spice, sage and vanilla bean aromas before giving way to a concentrated core of mineral-accented berry and damson plum flavors that build richness as they make their way to the finish line, stretching out around firming tannins and a late echo of coffee bean. Carmenere and Petit Verdot. Best from 2026 through 2034. 160,000 cases made, 2,300 cases imported.
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Wine Enthusiast
The 2021 vintage of this opulent red from the renowned Apalta Valley shows freshness and lots of fruit. A nose of baked berries brings to mind delicious notes of cranberry pie. Flavors of mulberries, blackberries and raspberries merge with integrated wood spices and Carmenère’s signature notes of herbs in the background. The wine’s muscular structure suggests it will age wonderfully.
Dark, full-bodied and herbaceous with a spicy kick, Carménère found great success with its move to Chile in the mid-19th century. However, the variety went a bit undercover until 1994 when many plantings previously thought to be Merlot, were profiled as Carménère. Somm Secret— Carménère is both a progeny and a great-grandchild of the similarly flavored Cabernet Franc.
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.