Wine region · Chile
Colchagua Valley
A warm valley in the Rapel region, known for ripe Carmenère, Cabernet and Syrah.
About Colchagua Valley
Colchagua’s warmth allows Carmenère to reach full ripeness, which matters: underripe Carmenère is aggressively green and pyrazine-driven.
Apalta is its most celebrated sub-zone.
Colchagua is the southern half of the Rapel Valley and one of Chile's two best-known red wine regions, running from the Andean foothills west towards the coastal range.
It is warm and dry, with a long growing season and almost no harvest rain, and it ripens Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenère and Syrah reliably. The eastern Apalta sub-zone, a natural amphitheatre of granite hillside, is the most highly regarded part.
Carmenère is the region's signature and its most interesting story. The variety was thought extinct after phylloxera and was rediscovered in Chile in 1994, having been planted and mislabelled as Merlot for over a century.
It ripens very late — often into May — and needs full ripeness to avoid a green, capsicum character. Where it gets it, the wine is plummy and dark with a soy-like savoury depth.
The valley's western end, closer to the coast, is cooler and increasingly planted to Sauvignon Blanc and Syrah.
No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A country’s major wine division, usually containing appellations or sub-regions beneath it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.
Grapes
Wines from here
What to eat, and how to serve it
Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Wines of Chile — Wines of Chile