Santa Carolina Gran Reserva Petit Verdot 2011, Rapel Valley
Critic Reviews (3)
An elegant fully flavoured wine at a great price. It is a big wine with lots of aroma and densely packed with flavour...
The late ripening Petit verdot grape - with all its meaty, funky character - manages to ripen well in Chile, but it...
Dense and dark, highly savoury and herbal-fruity, this petit verdot from Santa Carolina is a huge mouthful of wine...
Community Reviews (4)
Dense, inky hue, smoky and full bodied with dark fruit flavours. Very nice, wish I had purchased a second one.
I enjoyed this, but it's not for everyone. The bouquet is pleasant, with blueberry notes and a bright, floral youthfulness. The attack is bitter, which would likely be unpleasant for many people, but which I found engaging. Great concentration on the midpalate. But texturally the wine is surprisingly thin, and the finish is surprisingly short.
There's a good reason Petit Verdot is principally used in blends: even in small proportions it can add a great deal to a wine's structure, depth, and complexity. But it can also be really good on its own, and this super value is indeed that, with a deep purple colour, rich aromas/flavours of blueberry, dark plum, bitter herbs, leather, mocha, and black pepper, youthfully firm tannins, and a thick mouthfeel, along with a sour cherry-raspberry edge that keeps things refreshing. It may not be a wine of profundity, but it certainly pushes the varietal's limits with personality and balance.