Hi all- Curious what your experiences are with higher end South American wines. I have no experience myself. How do these wines tend to compare with Bordeaux vs California? Or any other wines for that matter? I’m a big Bordeaux fan, less of a Napa cab fan; will these wines scratch my itch?
Comparing critic scores and prices, it seems like these are a potential bargain- brands like Cantena Zapata and Almaviva regularly get really high scores and cost just a little north of $100 a bottle. That’s not happening in Bordeaux or Napa! So what do you all think?
Don Melchor, Montes M, Achaval Ferrer Single Vineyards, plenty of South American wines deliver great value compared to wines around the world, they just seem expensive for South American wines.
When it comes to higher end Chilean wines, I’ve had many vintages of Don Melchor, Cono Sur Silencio, Errazuriz Kai, Errazuriz Don Maximiano, Errazuriz La Cumbre, Viñedo Chadwick, Santa Carolina Herencia, multiple vintages of Seña and Tarapacá Tara.Pakay, Viña Maipo Quinta de Maipo and Viu Manent Viu 1.
Of these, Viu 1 has been probably the only one that has been somewhat impressive. All the others have felt very masculine - at least that’s how I would describe these brash and technical wines, many of which have come across as dull, flabby or plain fat, capable of only shouting, not screaming. All in all, almost invariably they seem to be very over-oaked, spoofy winemaker wines - all too many of them excessively ripe and lacking in structure due to very low, soft acidity. I’m not a big fan of Chilean wines, but I’ve had a healthy bunch of quite nice, well-made wines. What has been in common with these wines is that they have tended to hover around $25, not around $100.
What I would like to understand is - how much do these top end SA wines go for in their local markets? or are they all exported to nations which are normalized into thinking $100/btl is cheap for a flagship?
Achaval Ferrer Single Vineyards (as mentioned earlier). These are great wines and are not cheap as they were years ago but I have never been disappointed with any vintage I have sampled.
They’re quite abit cheaper in Argentina, I purchased a bottle of El Enemigo Gualtallary Cab Franc there for 1400 pesos at the time worth roughly 40 usd, and it’s about $100/btl here.
I’m a huge fan of Alamaviva and Don Melchor. Clos Apalta is really good too. To me Alamaviva, and Don Melchor maybe to a lesser extent, are almost like a mix of Napa and Bordeaux with big fruit and more modern/new world mouthfeel, but really great green/bell pepper/paprika/jalapeno notes and showing more complexity than a lot of modern Napa wines (to me at least). To me Clos Apalta is more Bordeaux like.
Antiyal’s Carmenere Vinedo Escorial is an amazing wine to me. For me, it’s a 94pts wine. I had it on a job trip to Santiago a few years back, and immediately had to order a half case when I got back.
Depends on the country. Argentina has been the biggest consumer of their own wines, so it’s possible that even some of their top end wines get consumed there - although virtually everywhere the flagship wines are exported for the most part, not consumed locally.
However, in Chile the local consumption is around 10% of the production and 90% of the wine is exported, so I doubt they are particularly interested in their flagship cuvées. Wine really hasn’t been a big thing in Chile, even though they produce a lot of it. I guess it shows in how Argentinian top wines tend to be a bit better and more “serious”, made to be the best wine the local terroir allows, while the Chilean top wines seem to be more like technical winemaker’s wine, made according to some specification of an ideal “cult wine” with no thought to what kinds of wines the local terroir would let them make best. At least that’s how I’ve always “tasted” the difference between Argentina and Chile - although there are tons of uninteresting, spoofy flagship wines made in Argentina as well.
15 or so years ago when I could get Don Melchor around $40 and Clos Apalta around $65, they were screaming values. Have tried Melchor in recent vintages at $80 it’s worth it IMO but no longer a screaming value.
Don Melchor is my favorite thus far, and I’m building a vertical of it in my cellar as it has the stuffing to lay down for a while. Has it’s own thing going on compared to Napa or Bordeaux to me.
That’s kind of the impression I’ve gotten, too. Chile is a little more ranchero country, whereas Argentina has a closer connection to European influence and emulation. More urban. That said, I do think Chile is moving into a more experimental vein - there seems to be a lot more young bodegas flirting with low intervention in Chile, experimenting with Pais and other strange varietals etc than in Argentina. Argentinian winemaking feels much more big and old school in style and not as adventurous. So I suppose it depends on what style one is after.
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