Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The top of the range in a cool year, the 2013 Montsecano is sourced from their biodynamically farmed vineyard; it fermented in stainless steel and matured in egg-shaped cement vats where the wine was kept for about one year before bottling. All the wines here are bottled completely unoaked. It has aromas of sour cherries, raspberries, violets and something earthy, very perfumed and aromatic with character. The palate is medium-bodied with very fine tannins (it's been in bottle for one and a half years already). It was bottled in March 2014. The first vintage of this wine was 2008 and it's still going strong, so I think this should be quite long-lived. Some 6,200 bottles produced. Rating: 93+
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James Suckling
This is tight and dense pinot noir with lots of meat, truffle and berry character. Full body, chewy tannins yet bright and delicious. Dynamic pinot from Casablanca. A wine with Alsace's Andre Ostertag.
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.”
A region that has become synonymous with some of the best whites of Chile, the Casablanca Valley is full of dozens of bodegas who either grow fruit here or come from outside to source from local growers for their own white wine programs. The valley runs from east to west, which means that its westernmost vineyards receive the most cooling influence from the reliable afternoon sea breezes. The soils also tend to be heavier in clay in the west, whereas the eastern end of the valley is warmer and its soils are predominantly granitic. Sauvignon blanc thrives here, Chardonnay does well and Pinot noir is not uncommon.