Tonight's selection:
Wine: "Kawin" 2011 Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, by Hacienda Lolol
Origin: Central Valley, Chile (Lolol is a Chilean commune and town in Colchagua Province, O'Higgins Region. Lolol was founded in 1830. Thanks Wikipedia!)
Price: $9.95 !
Rating: 4 of 5 = PFG
Smooth, peppery, lush, very drinkable due to its mellow tones. Mmm-hmmm, it's nice! I was surprised by this Chilean Cab, actually. I fear the price tag lowered my expectations (I'm a dick). So I wondered if Chilean winemakers enjoy national subsidies, and expressly googled. It seems some Chilean vintners do, and some do not. This is an interesting piece on the industry down there: (http://www.winesofchile.org/2012/03/chilean-wine-greats-nominated-for-wine-intelligence-awards/). I also found a nerd who had a pretty succinct opinion, "Wine down here in Chile ranges in price from $1 to $3 per bottle. I’ve been drinking these and some luxury ($7) Chilean wines and, to my uneducated palette, they compare favorably to wines tasted in California’s Napa Valley wines which were $30-50/bottle. So the question for the wine experts reading this is… why would anyone buy wine from Napa, where a small bit of land for a house is almost $1 million? One would naively suppose that grapes and wine produced on some of the world’s most expensive real estate would be a bad bargain. We don’t buy apples from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We don’t buy oranges from Beverly Hills. Couldn’t a winery in a place where real estate and labor are cheaper (e.g., Australia, Argentina, Chile, etc.[my edit: labour & real estate is not cheaper in Australia]) always produce a much better wine for any given price?" The 'fair trade' ghost that lives in my conscious is mildly suspicious of that attitude, but the rest of my mind likes the logic. The label states that the word 'Kawin' means "a gathering or celebration" in the native Mapuche language, and thus it's "a wine for pleasure of sharing." Tonight I have the pleasure of sharing it with myself, but oh how I'd love to have 4 bottles flowing around a dinner table with 5 friends, roast duck, and a garlic-something accoutrement... especially at that price. But it's pairing nicely with plain potato chips this evening.
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| It was explained to me in Australia that the vintage of a southern hemisphere wine is actually a year ahead of the growing/harvesting season in the northern hemisphere, and to think of this 2011 as a 2010 (which allows us to stick to the rule of never drinking a Cab Sauv before it has aged two or more years). Go get some! |
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