2015 Viña Tarapacá Cabernet Sauvignon Gran Reserva

Community Tasting Notes (2) Avg Score: 88.9 points

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  3/26/2019 - ajbergren wrote: 85 Points

  Deep purplish red with high optical density and medium minus reflectivity. Decent intensity of aromas, with mixed dark berries, vegetal garden (celery seed), and some green herbaceous notes (some spicy peppers and celery stock). Full bodied with medium acidity on the palate and a very broad, even texture with a dense and rich mouthfeel. Very easy going personality here, with mass appeal, but perhaps a bit unstructured. Flavours of rich dark berries (candied blackberries, cassis, and ripe plums) on the attack. The midpalate brings on some spicy green notes and a vanilla oak note on top of the fruit, along with herbal and leather flavours. The final transition brings some dried berries and the finish is short, with oak spices and warm berries. Overall, good intensity, and a stright-forward, easy to drink wine. Definite Chile profile with the green notes in the background, but not too much green. Still, comes off a bit shallow and flashy, with more candied flavours and a thick presence; not an elegant and complex wine.
  
  This is a good value wine for those times when an easy to drink, big red that is also sweet and mild is needed. No old world profile here, but such wines have their place. Not my preferred style, but really not bad. Ready to drink now.

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  1/20/2018 - forceberry wrote: 81 Points

  Tasted blind in VV.
  
  Slightly translucent, deep and dark purplish-red color. Powerful and somewhat herbaceous nose that tells me instantly this must be Chilean Cab: aromas of ripe blackcurrant-driven dark berries, currant leaves, some tomato, a little bit of mocha oak and a hint of caramel. Feels quite over-the-top. The wine is ripe, sweet-toned - but not jammy - and very round on the palate with ripe flavors of juicy blackcurrants, some plummy fruit, a little bit of vegetal capsicum character, light oaky notes of mocha and milk chocolate, a herbaceous hint of tomato leaf and a touch of extracted oak bitterness. The wine is rather low in acidity with very gentle and easy tannins, making the wine feel very imbalanced: a wine this big and ripe should have a lot of structure to balance out the intensity of the fruit. The finish is quite long and sweet-toned but also somewhat dull and flabby with flavors of blackcurrant juice, currant leaves, some sweet and toasty oak, a little bit of sweet red fruits and a touch of fresh plummy fruit.
  
  A big and quite herbaceous yet very ripe fruit bomb with a lot of power and intensity but very little in the way of structure, making the wine feel quite lackluster and flabby. Overall this wine feels so ridiculously expressive and fruit-forward I must wonder what kind of spoofulation there must be happening under the hood, because nowhere else Cabernet Sauvignon does taste this, well, Cabernet than in Chile. This taste more like concentrated Cab extract than wine. And no, that is not a commendation. Not really worth its price at 14,99€.

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