2015 De Martino Legado Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon, Maipo Valley
Critics reviews
Luis Gutirrez - 28/04/2017
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.
Cabernet Sauvignon
The most famous red wine grape in the world and one of the most widely planted.
It is adaptable to a wide range of soils, although it performs particularly well on well-drained, low-fertile soils. It has small, dusty, black-blue berries with thick skins that produce deeply coloured, full-bodied wines with notable tannins. Its spiritual home is the Médoc and Graves regions of Bordeaux where it thrives on the well-drained gravel-rich soils producing tannic wines with piercing blackcurrant fruits that develop complex cedarwood and cigar box nuances when fully mature.
The grape is widely planted in California where Cabernet Sauvignon based wines are distinguished by their rich mixture of cassis, mint, eucalyptus and vanilla oak. It is planted across Australia and with particular success in Coonawarra where it is suited to the famed Terra Rossa soil. In Italy barrique aged Cabernet Sauvignon is a key component in Super Tuscans such as Tignanello and Sassicaia, either on its own or as part of a blend with Sangiovese.
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Description
The only pure Cabernet Sauvignon I tasted was the 2015 Legado Cabernet Sauvignon, as the grape is not really their specialty even if they are located in Maipo. With it they want to show the typicity of the grape in the Isla de Maipo through separating plots after a soil study to personalize the canopy management of the different subplots. 2015 was both warm and high yielding, and the grapes from a massale selection planted ungrafted between 1992 and 1998 were fermented in stainless steel with indigenous yeasts after a cold soak. The wine matured in used oak barrels for 17 months. A noteworthy Cabernet at a very attractive price. It has some meaty aromas and a notable absence of vegetal aromas, quite amazing given the low alcohol. This is not a coincidence, it's the result of working hard in viticulture, especially the irrigation. It has an incredible balance and a sense of harmony with fine tannins. There is a faint bitterness in the finish. This is an old school Cabernet. 46,165 bottles were filled in September 2016.
Luis Gutirrez - 28/04/2017
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