The Chilean wine powerhouse releases the 33rd vintage of its flagship wine, Don Melchor 2019, a Cabernet Sauvignon from Puente Alto in Maipo Valley.
Concha y Toro is Chile’s biggest wine company. While it is famed for its globally distributed, popular and affordable Casillero del Diablo brand, it also is a serious player in fine wine.
The company made Chilean wine history in 1984 when it set out to create a Cabernet Sauvignon-based fine wine from Puente Alto in the Maipo Valley. The pioneering first vintage was 1987 and just over ten years later, in 1998, Don Melchor was the wine that paved the way for Almaviva, Concha y Toro’s joint venture with Château Mouton Rothschild in Bordeaux.
Acquiring this younger, more illustrious sibling, however, did not prevent Don Melchor from making its own way. The two wines today stand alongside each other.
The grapes for Don Melchor are grown in a particularly cool vineyard, lending elegance and freshness to the fruit. Its altitude of 665m/2,182ft in combination with the gravelly soils of an alluvial terrace of the Maipo River which are interspersed with clay, predestined the site for finely structured Cabernet Sauvignon.
The 2019 vintage – the 33rd Don Melchor – is a blend of 92% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc, 2% Merlot and 1% Petit Verdot that spent 15 months in French oak barrels before its release.
The wine was named in honour of family ancestor Don Melchor Concha y Toro who was the first to plant Bordeaux grape varieties in Chile’s Maipo Valley in 1883.
