A few days ago, Eduardo Chadwick, the owner of the Errazuriz, Seña and Viñedo Chadwick wineries in Chile, staged a 20th anniversary celebration for the so-called Berlin Tasting, a blind tasing of Chadwick’s wines against top red Bordeaux and Italian Super Tuscans that took place in the city on Jan. 23, 2004. He even used the same location – the Regent Hotel just off Berlin’s beautiful Gendarmenmarkt square. However, the event wasn’t just about honoring the first serious recognition of the Chilean wine industry for their high-end reds.
“For us, the Berlin Tasting was like the Berlin Wall falling,” Chadwick told me. “Don’t forget that back then the international critics were not rating our wines. That came later, most importantly when James Suckling gave 100 points to the Viñedo Chadwick Cabernet Sauvignon Valle de Maipo 2014 back in 2016. He was the first critic to stick his neck out. Others followed.”
The guests, who came from all over Europe, tasted not only the wine that was placed first by the international jury 20 years ago – the Viñedo Chadwick Cabernet Sauvignon Valle de Maipo 2000 – but also wines from more recent vintages. These included the Seña Valle de Aconcagua 2021, which earned a perfect 100-point rating from James Suckling for its extraordinary concentration and brilliance.
At the other end of the scale was the Errazuriz Valle de Aconcagua Don Maximiniano Founder’s Reserve 1984, from the first vintage that Eduardo Chadwick made after his father, Alfonso, bought back the Errazuriz winery. Their ancestor Maximiniano Errazuriz founded the winery in 1870 and at the end of the 19th century it was the largest estate winery in the whole world. The wine showed remarkably well considering that it was made in a primitively equipped winery.
Compared with the older vintages, the Chadwick wines from the last decade really stood out thanks to the fineness of the tannins, the elegance of the balance and the incredible length at the finish. “We want elegance and finesse!” Chadwick explained. For us, this makes the wines of young vintages like 2020 and 2021 extremely appealing already, although they also have great aging potential. However, this view wasn’t shared by all at the event.
It was interesting to listen to the comments of the participants at the event, many of whom loudly praised the mature vintages, clearly preferring their more developed aromas to the “embryonic” younger wines that they found less interesting. Sometimes it sounded like matured red Bordeaux was the prism through which the wines were being tasted. We love mature red Bordeaux, but the wines of Chile have their own personality, or rather a range of personalities depending on the vineyard location.
One of the things the tasting demonstrated was how different the wines are from the Aconcagua Valley, where Don Max and Seña grow, compared with the Maipo Valley, where Viñedo Chadwick is located. You can also rather easily taste that Don Max grows in a warmer location than Seña, the latter having a delicacy of flavor the former doesn’t have. The tannins feel different too, being a bit more robust, yet powdery, in Don Max compared with the more silky Seña.
The other striking thing that changed a lot was the development of the blends. Don Max started out as a pure cabernet sauvignon, but the 2021 blend contains fully 22 percent malbec, 8 percent carmenere and 7 percent petit verdot. Seña started as a blend of cabernet sauvignon with 5 percent caremenere and 5 percent merlot, but the perfect-scoring 2021 blend is only half cabernet sauvignon plus 27 percent malbec, 17 percent carmenere and 6 percent petit verdot. The move in favor of malbec, the red grape most associated with neighboring Argentina, is striking.
One surprise at the event, was the inclusion of several vintages of Chadwick’s Kai, a blend dominated by the carmenere grape that arrived in Chile from Bordeaux in the late 19th century. There are only a handful of hectares of it left in Bordeaux, as it wasn’t widely replanted after the phylloxera plague.
Eduardo Chadwick explained that carmenere is a complicated grape because it needs to be picked late to get aromatic elegance (to reduce the content of pyrazines – substances responsible for the bell pepper aroma). However, if you wait too long, then the acidity drops (and the pH rises), which pushes it in a broad and heavy direction. The Kai tasting showed that Chadwick’s team is on its way toward perfecting this grape, too.
– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor
