Wine & Spirits - June 2019 - 73

89 | San Pedro Regalado

$20

2015 Ribera del Duero Embocadero (Best
Buy) ^ A meaty Ribera from a cooperative in
La Aguilera, this wine's old-vine concentration meets new French oak in a mash-up of
the rustic and the modern. It's polished and
richly textured by the oak, but a little volatile, with peppery scents and horse-stable
notes. Pour it with a grilled steak. § Frontier
Wine Imports, Dover, NJ
271081

88 | Ferratus

$19

88 | Tionio

$18

2017 Ribera del Duero A0 Tempranillo
(Best Buy) ^ Simple, ripe and clean, this is a
lean red with tart berry flavors, lasting on
notes of tar and savory meatiness. For a pig
roast. § Wine Bridge Imports, Davis, CA
270203
2016 Ribera del Duero Austum (Best Buy) ^
This has the brisk, cool feel of a stone church
with vaulted ceilings, the wine's fruit offering the simple flavors of a savory blueberry
jam. High-toned spice keeps it lifted; to serve
with herb-crusted lamb. § Cordelina Wine Co.,
Gold River, CA
270184

88 | Marqués de
Valparaíso

$15

2016 Ribera del Duero Roble (Best Buy) ^
Light and airy, this wine presents its sweet
black-raspberry-scented fruit with a little
pleasant bitterness, like cinnamon, from the
oak. Time in wood has rounded the wine but
not taken over the wholesome fruit flavors.
It's a soft red to open before dinner, to drink
with olives or chicken-liver mousse. § Worldwide Libations, Hackensack, NJ

270419

87 | J. García Carrión

$13

2017 Ribera del Duero Roble Viña Arnáiz
(Best Buy) ^ Light and crisp, this wine feels
lean and muscled, with strawberry and redcherry flavors. It's simple and clean in the
middle, a little earthy in the end, ready for
lamb shawarma. § CIV (USA), Miami, FL n

YEAR'S BEST
MAIPO REDS
Our blind panels tasted 60 new-release reds from Maipo, Chile, over the past 12 months.
Joshua Greene, our critic for Chilean wines, rated 15 as exceptional (90+) and 3 as Best
Buys. Find a complete list of wines tasted and all reviews at wineandspiritsmagazine.com.

CA B E RNET SAUVIGNON

123733

94 | Concha y Toro

123734

95 | Concha y Toro

$120

2016 Puente Alto Don Melchor Puente
Alto Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ^ Now
in its thirtieth vintage, Don Melchor grew
out of research by Pablo Morande, the chief
winemaker at Concha y Toro when Chile
was just beginning to open up to the world.
He began separating blocks at the Tocornal
Vineyard, on a terrace above the north side of
the Maipo River, work that continued under
Enrique Tirado, who took on Don Melchor
in 1997 and continues to focus on it today.
The wine has come from the same 324-acre
vineyard since the beginning. This 2016 is
among the best vintages I have tasted from
those 30 years, a great Maipo cabernet with
the lean structure of a marathon runner,
dynamic and graceful in its structural intensity and black-currant freshness. The tannins
have the clarity of cabernet rooted in river
stones-but rather than the coastal gravel
washes at Latour, Pichon and Las Cases in
the Gironde, it's a collection of rocks carried
down the mountains by the Maipo. That terrace, tucked into the western shadow of the
cold Andes, yields a delicate cabernet, even
as its underlying richness of tannins builds
dimension into a chord of lasting flavor. §
Fetzer Vineyards, Hopland, CA

$40

2016 Pirque Terrunyo Block Las Terrazas Cabernet Sauvignon ^ When Ignacio
Recabarren developed the Terrunyo wines
for Concha y Toro in the late 1990s, he
selected the old vines at Pirque for his cabernet sauvignon. Those vines, replanted in
2003 on their own roots, grow on a terrace
along the south bank of the Maipo River, the
wine now made by Lorena Mora. It's a silky,
gentle cabernet with cool, spicy flavors of red
and black currants lasting on a quiet riff of
mineral tannins. This is not trying to achieve
the power of cabernet grown in Napa Valley,
nor the grandeur of the Médoc. Its pleasures
are more subtle, a response, perhaps, to the
grandeur and power of the Andes. § Fetzer
Vineyards, Hopland, CA

123938

92 | Viña Maipo

$50

2014 Buín Protegido Cabernet Sauvignon ^
Max Weinlaub makes this wine from Viña
Maipo's original vineyard, along the river
in the central valley town of Maipo, west of
Buin. The own-rooted cabernet vines date
to 1970, planted in alluvial soil, producing
a rich and generously oaked New World
WINE & SPIRITS

JUNE 2019

73
http://www.wineandspiritsmagazine.com https://www.conchaytoro.com/en/descubre-vinos/ https://www.conchaytoro.com/en/descubre-vinos/ http://www.garciacarrion.es/en/home-in http://www.vinamaipo.com/en/
Wine & Spirits - June 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - June 2019
