About this WINE
Vina Geo Wines
Chono (Vina Geo Wines) is a modern and thoroughly quality-conscious Chilean wine producer, the brainchild of Alvaro Espinoza, who acted as consultant winemaker in its early years and established its reputation for identifying and nurturing individual red wines which demonstrate a real sense of place.
The Elqui Valley is the most Northerly of the Chilean wine regions, famous mostly for its wonderfully clear skies and a resulting proliferation of observatories and star gazers. Basking in semi-arid terrain to the east of the city of La Serena, the vines are photogenic, tempered somewhat by the cooling influence of the Pacific Ocean. Here Syrah has found its homestead, and here Alvaro Espinoza has grappled successfully with this famously temperamental varietal.
The Chono exhibits a purity of Syrah fruit seldom encountered outside the Northern Rhône. This is achieved, incredibly, without recourse to oak, the quality of the fruit lending classic Syrah aromatics and a palate which is rich and generous yet also precise and linear. It is encouraging that the trend to regionality, whereby particular areas become recognised for particular varieties, is now evidenced more and more in Chile, a recognition of both the diversity and quality of its indigenous soils.
Syrah/Shiraz
A noble black grape variety grown particularly in the Northern Rhône where it produces the great red wines of Hermitage, Cote Rôtie and Cornas, and in Australia where it produces wines of startling depth and intensity. Reasonably low yields are a crucial factor for quality as is picking at optimum ripeness. Its heartland, Hermitage and Côte Rôtie, consists of 270 hectares of steeply terraced vineyards producing wines that brim with pepper, spices, tar and black treacle when young. After 5-10 years they become smooth and velvety with pronounced fruit characteristics of damsons, raspberries, blackcurrants and loganberries.
It is now grown extensively in the Southern Rhône where it is blended with Grenache and Mourvèdre to produce the great red wines of Châteauneuf du Pape and Gigondas amongst others. Its spiritual home in Australia is the Barossa Valley, where there are plantings dating as far back as 1860. Australian Shiraz tends to be sweeter than its Northern Rhône counterpart and the best examples are redolent of new leather, dark chocolate, liquorice, and prunes and display a blackcurrant lusciousness.
South African producers such as Eben Sadie are now producing world- class Shiraz wines that represent astonishing value for money.
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Description
You read it here first; the Elqui Valley is the place in Chile to grow Syrah. With its semi-arid terrrain, tempered by the cooling Pacific, and wonderfully clear atmosphere (several observatories are located here), this has proved an ideal spot for Alvaro Espinoza to demonstrate his skills with this famously temperamental variety. Very low yields generate highly concentrated fruit, while maceration is gentle to avoid over-extraction, A deep Syrah colour, then a friendly nose of spice, black fruit and hints of macerated prune; the palate is beautifully soft with red and black fruit flavours and finely wrought tannins.
(Simon Field MW, BBR Buyer)
Chono Syrah, Elqui Valley is an opulently spicy, blackberry-fruited Chilean counterpart to the northern Rhone’s Crozes Hermitage from the charismatic Alvaro Espinoza.
(Anthony Rose – The Independent -19-Dec-09)
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