Chile’s Don Melchor Shows Wines Must ‘Suffer’ to Beat Aussies
A decade ago, the wineries of Australia and New Zealand were gaining huge chunks of the global wine market. Yet in the sweepstakes for the next decade, I’m putting my money on Chile turning out excellent wines smack in the affordable $8-$15 range. It’s no wonder that U.S. imports of Chilean wine increased 13 percent last year to $207 million.
It’s not just volume that drives Chile’s success. Some great (and more expensive) cabernet blends are now coming out of the country’s vineyards, including Montes Alpha M, Apalta and Almaviva. One of the very best is Don Melchor, made in the Maipo Valley, in the foothills of the Andes. Blessed with an isolated mountain terroir protected from pests like phylloxera and with laws to prevent the importation of any foreign plants, the Maipo is an Eden for winemakers.
Don Melchor, established in 1987, is named after the founder of its parent company and Chile’s largest wine producer, Vina Concha y Toro. The firm, which dates to 1883, now generates sales of more than 6 million cases annually, shipped to 125 countries.
The Don Melchor winery began after Concha’s enologist visited colleague Emile Peynaud, a towering figure in Bordeaux who has been called the “father of modern winemaking.” Peynaud encouraged Concha to imitate the Bordeaux style of cabernet blended with other grapes.
“The soil is actually poor and stony, with few nutrients,” Enrique Tirado, 42, winemaker at Concha since 1997, told me over a beefsteak lunch in New York. “Great wines have to suffer, and we’ve had 21 years now to improve and refine Don Melchor. At first we used 100 percent cabernet, then added merlot, ripped that out, and now we blend in cabernet franc.”
Cool Valley
The grapes are picked fairly late because the winery is in the coolest area in the valley, with a cold wind that keeps intense heat at bay. Still, Tirado contends that global warming is both “evident and huge” in the region, which for the foreseeable future is actually something of a boon to cool- weather vineyards. The wine spends 14-15 months in oak barrels, then one more year in bottle before release.
Over lunch I was able to taste six vintages, beginning with 2001, which was still tight on first sip but loosened up into a wine clearly identified as a Bordeaux blend. It was just as clearly a more lush Chilean wine, warm and layered with fruit, vanilla and good acids.
The 2002 was very intense, though with a balance of mineral and dark-fruit components, while the 2003 had the added nuance of pepper and spice. All were ready to drink now, though each showed a stage of development that assured me they would improve over the next few years.
More Alcohol
The consistency of flavor and style in the earlier vintages wines was much to my liking, so I began to have concerns when I tasted the 2004, 2005 and 2006. The usual alcohol level of 13.6 percent was getting bumped up. The later vintages seemed like much bigger wines -- the alcohol volume of the 2004 was a hefty 14.5 percent -- with fruit far more forward.
The 2004 was very concentrated and then loosened up with the ferrous taste of the porterhouse. The 2005 was, at this point, too plummy for my taste. The 2006, though possessed of enormous fruit aromas and taste, seemed closer to the earlier vintages’ style. I’d love to try them all again in a year or two. I’m certain the oldest will be even finer, and the youngest should come into better focus. The 2005 costs about $60-$69 and the 2006 about $73-$80.
I haven’t yet tasted Don Melchor earlier than these vintages, and you may be hard put to find bottles older than 2004 because they’re snapped up pretty soon after release. The wine shops and online retailers I checked are mostly showing the 2004 and 2005, with only a very few offering anything from the 1990s.
It’s not just supply and demand that drives the price of Don Melchor, which I find remarkably modest for a cabernet sauvignon of this caliber. It’s the kind of red wine that shows Chile cannot just deliver plenty of good wine, but is capable of making some great ones.