Attractive dark ruby color, deep and opaque. The nose is pure, focused, and layered, revealing delicate and clean aromas of blackberries, ripe cassis, currants, and violet, associated with fine notes of tobacco, cedar, and coffee bean.
Reviews:
- Decanter: Confident complexity on display here, fresh, powerful spicy notes of tobacco and grilled coffee beans alongside cool blueberry fruits. Winemaker Michel Friou has made a brilliant wine in this vintage that expands outwards through the palate.
- James Suckling: This is such a beautifully nuanced red with tobacco, dried herbs, wet earth and currants. Some leather and rose petals, too. Full-bodied and chewy, yet refined with great polish. It’s rich and intense at the same time. Very focused center palate. Broad layers of tannin and fruit.
Producer Information
Almaviva, a high-profile wine brand based in the Maipo Valley, Chile, is a joint venture between Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Bordeaux and Chilean wine producer Concha y Toro. The eponymous wine is a Bordeaux-style blend, combining Cabernet Sauvignon with Carmenère and other Bordeaux varieties. This is one of Chile’s most prestigious wines. Its first vintage was in 1996, and it has since garnered many high ratings among critics. More recently its credentials as a fine wine have been further enhanced as its ability to mature for two decades or more has been proven. The wine is benchmarked by its producers against the great Cabernet-based wines of the Médoc and Napa Valley. In this respect the presence of Carmenère provides a differentiating factor. Almaviva is unusual among Chilean wines in following the chateau concept of a winery surrounded a contiguous vineyard (in practice many Bordeaux properties consist of more than one plot). In the tradition of top Bordeaux estates, Almaviva also makes a second wine, called EPU (“Two” in the Mapuche language).
