Tasting Report: Andes Top 100 Wines in 2014

99 TASTING NOTES

Thursday, Dec 18, 2014

This is my first Andes Top 100 ever. It's a list of the best wines I tasted in 2014 from Chile and Argentina, which was nearly 2,000 different wines. So I hope you will be impressed.

The great wines of the Andes are unique in a world full of great wines. They offer unique experiences in wine drinking due to their extraordinary countries with phenomenal climates, soils, vineyards and, of course, people. I traveled to Chile and Argentina twice this year, and I can't wait to get back to discover more exciting wines, from gloriously savory malbecs from Argentina's Mendoza region to delicate and refined pinot noirs from the costal region of Casablanca.

It's why my Wine of the Year was an Argentine malbec – the Viña Cobos Malbec Perdriel Luján de Cuyo Cobos 2011. As I wrote in the report in October, “It’s not only a perfect wine, but also represents the greatness of the wines of Argentina." This is a wine made from a single vineyard in the Perdriel subregion of Luján de Cuyo in Mendoza. The wine, as well as the other labels of Viña Cobos that are also present in this list, is the result of an alliance between owners Luis Barraud and Andrea Marchiori with California-based winemaker and consultant Paul Hobbs. The vineyard, with vines an average of 80 years old, sits at 995 meters above sea level. All these characteristics combined produce a wine that remains vigorous but maintains fabulous complexity as well as beautiful elegance. It's this contrast that makes it unique among malbecs and all great wines.

But there's so much more in Argentina to enjoy, from crisp torrontés in the north and seductively textured cabernet francs in Valle de Uco in Mendoza to the to the vivid and concentrated pinot noirs found in Patagonia. The list below has dozens of exciting wines.

My second wine in the Andes Top 100 is the icon wine of Chile – Seña, a Bordeaux blend with a high component of carmenere made from biodinamically grown grapes in Valle de Aconcagua, just an hour north of Santiago, the capital of Chile. On clear days, one can see from the top of the Seña vineyard Mount Aconcagua, which is an intimidating silhouette clearly standing above the Andes mountain range. The Aconcagua Valley is slightly cooler than some of the established traditional winemaking regions in central Chile, thus the Seña ,which is predominantly cabernet sauvignon with merlot, carmenere, petit verdot and a dash of malbec, is much more elegant than its southern counterparts in Chile.

The Seña is just one of many other Chilean wines that are worth seeking out. There's plenty of great carmenere-based reds such as the 2011 Montes Valle de Colchagua Purple Angel, but there’s also so much more, from refine and complex pinot noir to well-structured chardonnay and soulful, funky syrah, carignan, and cinsault.

Of course, many of the top wines in the list are expensive, but dozens of others are $20 to $40 a bottle and offer amazing quality for the money. This is also what is so exciting about the great wines of the Andes – value. Chile and Argentina offer fabulous quality bottles of wine that sell for prices that are half to one third the price of wines from other countries at the same quality level. And in the end, that's what all wine lovers want. Enjoy my Andes Top 100.

Tasting Report: Andes Top 100 Wines in 2014

Top 100 Tasting Notes