Errazuriz - Chile's First Estate

This week we feature a selection of wines from Chile’s Errazuriz plus new offers on William Fevre’s 2010 Chablis, the CVNE Monopole Blanco 2010, St Hallet Faith Shiraz and two ports from Seppeltsfield.

The Errazuriz Estate was founded in 1870 when Don Maximiano Errazuriz planted his first vineyards at Panquehue in the Aconcagua Valley. Today, the tradition of quality lives on with Don Maximiano’s descendant Eduardo Chadwick. Eduardo is the sixth generation of his family to be involved in the wine business. Eduardo has overseen the modernisation of the winemaking technology at this historic Estate whilst maintaining a distinct identity for its wines. Dedicated to producing estate grown wines of superior quality, Errazuriz has built a reputation as the “Premier Family Wine Estate of Chile”.

Today Errazuriz owns eight estates in Chile. Founded within the Aconcagua Valley (and benefiting from the maritime influence), here seven of Errazuriz’s estates are still located today. New plantings at the Errazuriz “Manzanar” vineyard site are within a stone’s throw of the Pacific, whilst Errazuriz’s plantings in the Casablanca Valley at the Errazuriz “La Escultura” site are only a little further away. The bulk of Errazuriz’s vineyard plantings are clustered in the central part of the Aconcagua Valley, almost 100 kilometres directly north of the Chilean capital of Santiago.

Errazuriz earned worldwide fame with the famous Berlin Tasting in 2004 when the 2000-2001 vintages of their icon cabernet blends, Vinedo Chadwick and Sena, placed ahead of leading Bordeaux First Growths Lafite, Margaux and Latour in a blind tasting attended by many leading wine critics. These top wines continued to perform extremely well vis a vis the top Bordeauxs in subsequent international events. Most recently the Vinedo Chadwick received the highest rating from Robert Parker for a Chilean cabernet (96pts) for the fourth year running and Stephen Tanzer awarded his highest ever ratings for the most recent vintages of all the icon wines – Chadwick, Kai Carmenere, La Cumbre Syrah and the Don Maximiano Founder’s Reserve.

Fortunately the quality flows through from top to bottom. At just over £7 a bottle at the case sale rate the Estate Reserva wines offer fantastic value and we’ve listed this range for the first time given the well justified positive reviews. The Wild Ferment Chardonnay is a past winner of the Wine Gang’s “Budget” Wine of the Year ( 2008 vintage) and the 2010 is equally as good and the Single Vineyard Sauvignon and Wild Ferment pinot are perennial favourites. Unfortunately we’re not able to put every wine on sale but we think that we’ve chosen the best from the range and have also included 2 tasting cases – one for Errazuriz Estate range and one for the Wild Ferment, Max Reserva and Single Vineyard wines.

Our Yalumba, Jim Barry, Vasse Felix, Nautilus and Concha Y Toro Terrunyo offers are still available and the new offers mentioned above are all accessible via the homepage.