Don Melchor wines: Comparing 23 vintages of Chilean royalty

Before there was Almaviva , Clos Apalta , Seña or Viñedo Chadwick , there was Don Melchor, standing alone and apart from every other Chilean wine. Named after the founder of Concha y Toro, it was the country’s first ‘Super-Chilean’ wine. Scroll down to see notes from the vertical tasting [subscriber-content]After recently tasting 23 vintages, going back to its first, the 1987, it’s clear to me that Concha y Toro’s vision for producing a world-class wine was correct. Don Melchor stands with the world’s best Cabernet Sauvignon -based wines, Bordeaux and Napa Valley included. This tasting showed that Don Melchor, like all great wines, develops with bottle age, transforming itself from a primary fruit-driven wine to something more savoury, complex and layered. Enrique Tirado, the winemaker, says that Don Melchor is basically an expression of Cabernet Sauvignon – the blend always contains more than 90% of that grape. Since 1999, he has used a small amount of Cabernet Franc, and in the 2015 vintage, even a small dollop of Petit Verdot. He notes that adding too much Cabernet Franc distorts Cabernet Sauvignon’s signature. All of the grapes come from a single site – the highly acclaimed gravelly, well-drained, 127ha Puente Alto vineyard in the Maipo Valley, just south of Santiago. The selection is severe. Tirado uses only 50%-70% of the fruit from that vineyard for Don Melchor. Annual production averages about 150,000 bottles. For the tasting, Concha y Toro supplied 10 vintages. The remaining 13 came either from a friend’s cellar or from my own. The style of Don Melchor has changed over the years, from one that emulated Napa Valley wines of the 1980s, to a more ‘international’ profile. Tirado attributes the change to better vineyard management – dividing the land into parcels, harvested and vinified separately – to capture what he calls, the ‘distinctive expression’ of Cabernet Sauvignon from each. Like any top-flight red Bordeaux, Don Melchor takes two decades to reach its peak. But those who prefer youthful richness can enjoy it younger because, as the late Louis-Paul Latour advised me: ‘Great wine always tastes great.’ Don Melchor fits that dictum. How the Don Melchor wines compare: 23 vintages from inception to latest release [wine-collection] [/subscriber-content] You may also like :

Fine wines to know from Chile and Argentina More articles from Decanter magazine's October 2018 issue

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Don Melchor: Comparing 23 vintages of Chilean wine royalty

Scroll down to see notes from the vertical tasting

Fine wines to know from Chile and Argentina

More articles from Decanter magazine’s October 2018 issue

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