Chile — wine

Colchagua

Chile's most internationally celebrated red wine valley — the Colchagua Valley stretches 140km east from the Pacific coast into the Andes foothills in the O'Higgins Region, with the Tinguiririca river providing irrigation to alluvial and granite soils. The warm Mediterranean climate is ideal for Carmenère — Chile's adopted signature variety, brought from Bordeaux in the 19th century and thought extinct until rediscovered in the 1990s — as well as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah. Apalta (in the eastern Andes foothills) has emerged as the appellation's finest sub-zone, home to Lapostolle's Clos Apalta and Montes's Alpha M.

Year Rating Notes
2021 Outstanding vintage with ideal ripening conditions. Carmenère and Cabernet of exceptional depth.
2020 Good vintage across the valley. Apalta sub-zone wines of excellent concentration.
2019 One of the decade's best. Long, even ripening season produced wines of great complexity.
2018 Reliable vintage with classic Colchagua character — ripe fruit, good structure.
2017 Outstanding year particularly for Syrah and Carmenère from the eastern Andes sites.