Extended tasting note 12  
Miguel Torres Conde de Superunda 2000 Curicó, Chile 

What is it about Chilean wine? Blind tasting is usually a difficult sport, but it’s rare that I blind taste a Chilean red wine without spotting its country of origin fairly quickly. And while inexpensive Chilean reds—packed full of pure, bright fruit—have been hugely successful commercially, Chilean fine wine hasn’t really done it for me. They’ve usually tasted like riper, more concentrated versions of cheap Chilean wines, offering sweet fruit but little in the way of complexity. I’ve nurtured this sneaking suspicion that Chilean wines taste worryingly alike.

But I’m an open-minded sort of guy, so tonight I opened a high-end Chilean red from Miguel Torres Chile: Conde de Superunda 2000 Curicó. The distinguishing feature of this wine is the varietal composition. As well as the usual Chilean fare of Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenère, we have Tempranillo and Monastrell (Mourvèdre). All aged for a couple of years in French (Nevers) oak.

As you’d expect, this is a deep, dark-coloured wine. I’m drinking it out of a Riedel Burgundy glass, and it’s 9.40 pm on a Wednesday evening. My goal until bedtime is, in addition to writing this note, to make a bit of progress with one of my Express columns, and also a chapter for my closures book. The wine will aid my creativity, or send me to sleep – one or the other. Wine writing is one of the few occupations that can be done glass in hand without a loss in productivity. (The assumption, here, is that one doesn’t neck a whole bottle in 20 minutes, in which case work quality is likely to be compromised.)

Back to the wine. I like the nose. There’s the trademark sweet, pure, blackcurrant fruit pastille character, but as well as this I’m getting some exotic spices and perhaps a hint of minerality, too. It’s quite fresh, with just a hint of supple greenness. Pure fruit plus greenness is, of course, one of the defining features of the Chilean red wine style. It’s not too obvious here. The palate is quite structured and savoury, providing ample support to the sweet fruit. Good concentration, with some dark chocolate notes and a little bit of plummy bitterness. There’s still a lot of pure fruit here, but it’s not overly sweet, and the spicy oak is very much in the background.

There’s no getting away from the fact that this is a new world wine in quite a modern mould. It still tastes Chilean, which I’m not saying is necessarily a bad thing. But with this new world character we have admirable structure and restraint. At age 6, this is a wine that still tastes quite primary, but I reckon if you look hard you can spot some spicy complexity coming through – perhaps over the next year or two this wine will begin to open out nicely. I also think that this is a wine with a future ahead of it, and in five years to a decade it will be singing. These projections are, of course, no more than educated guesswork. But I’m getting quite a good feeling about this bottle.

I’m fairly sure that this is the most serious Chilean wine I’ve yet tasted. I’ve done quite a few high-end Chileans, but this is a bit more understated, complex and balanced than the others. The alcohol level, 13.5%, is pretty sane, too. It’s hard to rate: I guess what I’m saying is that while I’m enjoying it, it isn’t really my style of wine. I like it but I don’t love it. But if you are more favourably disposed to the Chilean style, then this wine might well be the business, for you. If I’m pressed to give it a score, I’ll say 91/100.

Wine tasted 03/06
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Grünhaus; Roc des Anges; Gaillard; Veratina; Arturo; Wynns; Drystone; Foundry and Columella; Meruge; Foillard Morgon; Clonakilla

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