Chilean Wines

[stevebody]

My best-selling Cab right now (and deservedly so) is the Marques de Casa Concha '04 from Concha y Toro, the little brother of their towering Don Melchor. The Merlot, Syrah, and Chard in this line are also excellent values, usually topping out somewhere in the mid-teens.

Our best-selling wine for the past year is a collaboration between Peter Click (enterpreneur from here in Seattle who's the driving force behind the US brand of Fat Bastard) and Ventisquero, the large Chilean wine company. It's a wonderful 85/15 blend of Cab and Syrah, made by Felipe Toso, former head winemaker at Concha y Toro, who made the Don melchor for about fifteen years. It's called Root:1 and is as agreeable a Cab-based table wine as I've found in the past eighteen months.

Chile is on quite a roll, right now. The blend called Primus, by Veramonte (Agustin Huneeus' Chilean property) recently made Wine Spectator's list of Smart Buys for the year. The Latin pop singer Luis Miguel has recently released his own Cabernet, Unico, made by the son of Aurelio Montes, owner of the Montes brand. It's a nice, ageworthy Cab. The Santa Ema wines listed in your link, are very tasty but oaked to death. If you're a vanilla/smoke/butter fan, their Chard is killer and their Merlot has been fine for years. The list goes on and on. If you haven't tasted around in Chilean wines lately, you're missing some great stuff!