Harrowing Sailing Trip Spurs Chilean Vintners to Make Napa Wine
In 2006, Montes winery founders Aurelio Montes and Douglas Murray were on a yachting trip in southern Chile when a storm forced them to take refuge in a small bay. Battered by heavy rain and wind, the boat's anchor snapped, leaving them adrift in the dark.
``We were very scared,'' Montes recalled during a recent interview. ``We had to sail by night so as not to go into the rocks.''
When the vintners returned home to Santiago, they decided to navigate another challenging course -- producing a Napa cabernet sauvignon primarily for the U.S. market. Although Montes was already Chile's fifth-largest exporter of wine, the owners wanted to expand into one of the ``cathedrals'' of the winemaking world.
``We decided to convert this sailing challenge into a wine challenge in Napa,'' said Montes, who started the winery with Murray in 1988 with a $60,000 investment.
Their new line of wines, called NapaAngel and made at Artesa Winery in Carneros, California, is available in U.S. stores and restaurants. There are two versions of the wine, Montes NapaAngel ($55) and Montes NapaAngel Aurelio's Selection ($90).
About half the original production of 8,200 cases will be sold in the U.S., with the rest going to Japan and South Korea.
While that's a tiny percentage of Montes's annual production of 750,000 cases, marketing a relatively expensive wine right now in the U.S. is risky business. With the economy slumping because of the financial crisis on Wall Street, consumers are spending less on pricey wines at restaurants and stores.
Slowing Sales
Sales of bottles costing more than $15 slowed to a crawl in August, increasing less than 1 percent after rising 15 percent a year earlier, according to the Nielsen Co., the world's largest market research company.
``That's pretty dramatic,'' Richard Hurst, Nielsen's senior vice president for beverage alcohol, said in an interview. ``Premium brands have been the driver for the past five to 10 years; now their level of growth has slowed.''
At a tasting event in San Francisco in September, the first vintage of the new NapaAngel wine was poured along with a sampling of other offerings from the Montes winery, including two from its signature M line and two from its Argentinean brand called Kaiken.
Espresso Flavor
Unfortunately for NapaAngel, the 2005 Montes Alpha M ($90) stole the show. The Bordeaux-style blend exuded chocolate-covered espresso beans on the nose, giving way to a nice balance of blackberries, spices and a touch of green pepper.
The winery's decision to increase the cabernet franc component to 10 percent and reduce the merlot content to 5 percent from the 2003 version was noticeable in its bigger structure. Montes said that will give the wine better aging potential than the 2003 vintage.
The $55 bottle would fit in with other similarly priced offerings from Napa, with familiar scents of oak, vanilla and red berries. The tannins buck up over the fruit, showing this wine's youth.
The $90 wine was more intense, with black cherries in the mouth and softer tannins. The higher-end bottle would compete, price-wise, with Napa cabs such as Chateau Montelena, Duckhorn and Silver Oak.