I joined a Chilean wine tasting event a short while before. This is a really great opportunity to drink and understand more about Chilean wines. In this tasting, I have a chance to try six different Chile wines from six different Chile producers. I’m of course happy to have such an experience. But what make me happier is that I can take bottles of wines I tried during the tasting. I’m certainly happy that I can have wines free! However, what is more important to me is the chance to really try these wines in a more relaxed manner which allow me to give a fairer assessment.
Reader of this blog will know I’m more a drinker of old world wines, esp. French wines. I didn’t really drink Chilean wine often. When I picked a Chilean wine, I usually look for value for money than serious quality. You may disagree but French wine is still the benchmark of quality wine to me. Yet, this 2009 Carmen Gold Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, to a certain extent, changed my perception a bit. This is really a wine of serious quality. I wouldn’t say it can match the best of Bordeaux but it is certainly a wine with very good quality.
Although I’m a fan of French wines, I don’t agree with some of my friends who always accused new world wines simply because they didn’t taste like French wines. If you just prefer French wines, then you always have the choice to just drink French wines. Why you have to pick a new world wine and expect it tastes like an old world wine? One of the thing that fascinated me is the wide styles of wine that we can choose and pick. I rather have more styles than all the cabernet that taste like Bordeaux! As long as the wine is balanced, having good intensity and complexity and not a fruit bomb, I would classify it as a good wine.
My impression about Carmen is that it is a bulk wine producer that offer value for money for acceptable wine. Carmen never translate to serious quality to me. Yet, this Gold Reserve is not another ordinary Carmen. This is the flagship product of Carmen. The grapes are coming from vines planted in 1957 with an age of over 50 years old! The wine is also aged in new French barrels for 24 months and spend an another 12 months in bottle before release. The bottle I have is 2009 which I believe is not available on the market yet. Maybe this is specially supplied by the producer for this event.
Since this is a very young wine, I double decant the wine for an hour. However, the wine is still very closed initially. Luckily I finally get it opened after swirling. The wine shows intensive violet, tobacco, blackcurrant, spices and oak aromas. It has very good complexity. Although still quite tannic, the tannins are fine and ripe. Considering this is a Chilean wine, I found the wine is very restrained and quite elegant which I like it quite a lot. This is certainly a wine with great ageing potential. Yet, if you want to drink it now, I would suggest you to decant it for a few hours.