2020 De Martino, Cuvée, Viñedo Santa Inés, Maipo Valley, Chile
Critics reviews
3,119 bottles were filled in December 2021.
I also tasted the first vintage of the top 2020 Cuvée, produced with 88% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Malbec and 3% Petit Verdot selected from their vineyards in Isla de Maipo. It has 13% alcohol, reflecting a warmer and especially drier vintage, but it's very restrained, nothing heavy about it, elegant and balanced. It had a two-month maceration and an élevage of four months in used barriques and 14 months in 2,500-liter oak foudre. It's serious and austere with a toasty/burnt note in the nose, balsamic a little medicinal even, with shy flavors and fine tannins, quite balanced but not very expressive.
Drink 2023 - 2028
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate (April 2023)
The 2020 Cuvee Gran Vino De from Isla de Maipo is a blend of 88% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Malbec, and 3% Petit Verdot aged for 18 months in barrels and foudres. Garnet red in the glass. The complex but mild nose delivers ripe dark fruit with hints of spice, chutney, bay leaf and licorice. Lean in the mouth with a precise freshness for a Cab-based red from Maipo. The feel is silky with bold, refined tannins. A long-lasting, layered Margaux-inspired wine.
Drink 2025 - 2040
Joaquín Hidalgo, Vinous (March 2023)
About this WINE
De Martino
De Martino is one of the most progressive and exciting names on the Chilean wine scene, deservedly named Chilean Winery of the year in 2011. Through a network of intellectual partnerships and vineyard acquisition, it has quickly built up a reputation for organic viticulture of the highest quality, farming from over 350 different vineyards.
The corporate vision focuses on sustainability, terroir, and, by logical extension, excellence. By concentrating on the very best sites for the varieties in question, be they in Limari, Elqui or Maipo, and by the development of a world class winemaking team, De Martino now sits at the very top of the Chilean vinous hierarchy.
The Alto Piedras vineyards make up 5 hectares of the sub-Denominacion of the Isla de Maipo, a de facto island as the vines are surrounded by two branches of the Maipo River. Two other self-evident truths are located in the nomenclature; firstly that the terrain is rocky, volcanic gravel to be precise and secondly that the vines are quite high up. Chile’s indigenous grape, Carmenère, is here aged for 18 months in new French oak.
Maipo
Maipo Valley, the northernmost within Central Valley, is one of Chile's most prominent wine regions. It is located east of San Antonio and Casablanca Valley and north of Rapel Valley, and is nestled between two mountain ranges, the Andes and the Coastal Mountains, with Chile's capital city, Santiago, sitting in the middle.
Maipo is renown for its exceptional Cabernet Sauvignon, ripe, subtle, spicy and complex with its signature, powerful eucalyptus and blackcurrant flavours. It amounts for over 60% of the regions 10,000ha. Merlot, Chardonnay and Carmenere are also important.
Maipo plays host to several major, quality Chilean wine companies, including Almaviva, Concha y Toro, William Fevre, Santa Rita, De Martino
Cabernet Sauvignon Blend
Cabernet Sauvignon lends itself particularly well in blends with Merlot. This is actually the archetypal Bordeaux blend, though in different proportions in the sub-regions and sometimes topped up with Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot.
In the Médoc and Graves the percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend can range from 95% (Mouton-Rothschild) to as low as 40%. It is particularly suited to the dry, warm, free- draining, gravel-rich soils and is responsible for the redolent cassis characteristics as well as the depth of colour, tannic structure and pronounced acidity of Médoc wines. However 100% Cabernet Sauvignon wines can be slightly hollow-tasting in the middle palate and Merlot with its generous, fleshy fruit flavours acts as a perfect foil by filling in this cavity.
In St-Emilion and Pomerol, the blends are Merlot dominated as Cabernet Sauvignon can struggle to ripen there - when it is included, it adds structure and body to the wine. Sassicaia is the most famous Bordeaux blend in Italy and has spawned many imitations, whereby the blend is now firmly established in the New World and particularly in California and Australia.
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Description
3,119 bottles were filled in December 2021.
I also tasted the first vintage of the top 2020 Cuvée, produced with 88% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Malbec and 3% Petit Verdot selected from their vineyards in Isla de Maipo. It has 13% alcohol, reflecting a warmer and especially drier vintage, but it's very restrained, nothing heavy about it, elegant and balanced. It had a two-month maceration and an élevage of four months in used barriques and 14 months in 2,500-liter oak foudre. It's serious and austere with a toasty/burnt note in the nose, balsamic a little medicinal even, with shy flavors and fine tannins, quite balanced but not very expressive.
Drink 2023 - 2028
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate (April 2023)
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