Community Tasting Note

forceberry wrote:

Saturday, November 19, 2022 - A blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (78%), Carménère (10%), Petit Verdot (7%) and Syrah (5%). Aged for 22 months in French oak barriques (81% new). 14% alcohol, 3 g/l residual sugar and 5,6 g/l acidity. Tasted blind.

Dense and quite opaque blackish-red color with a still relatively youthful purplish hue. The nose feels dense, concentrated and rather ripe with intense, sweet-toned aromas of juicy blackcurrants and soft black cherries, some minty green notes, a little bit of ripe red plum, light toasty oak tones, a chocolatey hint of dark-toned mocha oak spice and a herbaceous touch of leafy Cab / Carménère character. The wine feels juicy, ripe and quite powerful on the palate with a full body and opulent flavors of ripe blackcurrants, sweet black cherries, some extracted woody bitterness, a little bit of toasty mocha oak, light plummy tones, a hint of cedar and a herbaceous touch of leafy greenness. Despite its rather massive body, the wine retains surprisingly good sense of structure with its quite high acidity and ample, moderately grippy tannins. The finish is ripe, sweet-toned and moderately tannic with a very long aftertaste of juicy cassis and cedary oak, some soft black cherry tones, a little bit of toasty mocha character, light minty green notes, a crunchy hint of tart crowberry and a touch of plummy dark fruit.

With its noticeable ripeness, rather overt Cabernet characteristics and quite liberal use of new oak, virtually everybody guessed Napa Cab first - and a quite recent vintage at that. The next guesses were several other California AVAs. When told the wine didn't come from the US, people started guessing modern Bordeaux and Australia. Although Chile didn't come as a big surprise when the wine was finally revealed, the wine name and the vintage did surprise me a little: this wine has been always quite a gargantuan beast when I've tasted it, always lacking in acidity, making the wine feel too sweet and flabby, lacking in energy. However, this 2010 vintage seemed to have much more acidity than the other, older vintages I've tasted - and it was surprisingly youthful for its age, coming across as not unlike a very recent bottling; nobody guessed anything older than 10 years at any point! While this wine was easily the best Don Maximiano Founder's Reserve I've tasted thus far (or any Errazuriz red for that matter), I must admit that it is still too ripe, big and oaky for my taste. However, seeing how the wine is both still relatively youthful and evolving in the right direction, it is certainly possible that with enough aging the wine might drop its baby fat and the obvious oak tones could integrate with the powerful, vibrant fruit. But at 86,48€ the wine is priced so that I most certainly ain't going to buy any bottles to see how it evolve.

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