Um, wow. Garishly purple in a peculiarly children’s-television kind of way, I can easily imagine Nomi Malone shoplifting some of this at a Sephora in Las Vegas. However, the way the wine smells is a hundred and eighty degrees away from its look: strangely dark, slightly peppery, with a nearly pickled, shoe-polished, venison meat pie edge to it, it’s a wonderfully seductive, complex wine of the sort you generally don’t associate with carignane.Delightfully immature, the wine doesn’t seem like it’s time to integrate itself just yet: there’s an initial impression of candied red fruits that quickly swaps itself out to reveal dusty wood shop shelves, somewhat clunky acidity (that thankfully keeps it all in check), and a thick, fat outro that slides by on groovy, tannic rails towards a long, gentle finish redolent of unfashionable hard candies and earthy, loamy sweetness with suggestions of forest flowers – it almost reminds me of the taste of oxalis that grows near California redwoods, with an almost citric tang combined with that rich, dark, earthy fruit.This is frankly insanely delicious – I wish I had some Parmesan cheese to eat with it, but alas, I don’t. If more wineries made carignane like this, I suspect more people would drink it. Then again, outside of California and Chile, I’m not sure there are a lot of winegrowers who take the trouble to grow it well.Santa Carolina
Price: CLP 6900
Closure: Cork
Source: Retail