Maquis Gran Reserva Cabernet Franc 2017
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James
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Robert
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Maquis Franco is Chile’s great Cabernet Franc. Under the guidance of renowned master blender, Jacques Boissenot, Maquis has produced a 100% Cabernet Franc that is not only an elegant wine to drink now, but will transform as it ages over the next 20 years. The unique seasonal conditions and soils of the Colchagua Valley help to produce a wine with great aromatic intensity and complexity.
Maquis Franco presents a dark cherry red color. The nose reveals a high complexity with red fruits such as blackberries and blueberries with some hints of lavender and a touch of licorice. The palate is well structured, with excellent volume. It’s fresh with elegant tannins and a long and persistent finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This has a fresh array of ripe dark-berry aromas with plenty of depth on the palate. The firm tannins frame a medium-bodied, red-plum and mulberry core. Nicely resolved at the finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The varietal 2017 Cabernet Franc include 4% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Petit Verdot. It fermented in stainless steel and matured in French oak barrels for one year. This is ripe, with 14% alcohol, and it has mellow acidity. This is very elegant and harmonious, subtle and elegant, with varietal character and the restrained house style of moderate alcohol—even though it was a warmer year—and good balance. The tannins are fine, and the finish is clean, focused and long. Very good. 40,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in June 2019.
Other Vintages
2019-
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James
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Robert
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Robert
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James
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The Hurtado family has owned the Viña Maquis vineyard for more than a century, but it wasn’t until almost 20 years ago that the family decided to make their own wine out of the terrific grapes in their own backyard. They built a state-of-the-art gravity flow winery and set out to make the Maquis winery one of the great properties in all of South America.
Located in Colchagua Valley, the winery’s focus is on distinctive single-vineyard, estate wines, as well as producing “balanced” wines that are not over-ripe (resulting in excessively high alcohol) but also not exhibiting any of the “green” character that sometimes plagues wines picked from grapes that have not fully matured. The Maquis main vineyard is essentially an island: it is deeply influenced by the Tinguiririca River on one side and the Chimbarongo Creek on the other. These two large waterways once brought alluvial sediment from the Andes and today act as pathways for cool coastal breezes that help moderate the warm Colchagua summers, contributing to the intensity, character, fruitiness and mineral elements of the Maquis wines. Maquis is fortunate to have such a privileged location.
Cabernet Franc, a proud parent of Cabernet Sauvignon, is the subtler and more delicate of the Cabernets. Today Cabernet Franc produces outstanding single varietal wines across the wine-producing world. Somm Secret—One of California's best-kept secrets is the Happy Canyon appellation of Santa Barbara. Here Cabernet Franc shines as a single varietal wine or in blends, expressing sumptuous fruit, savory aromas and polished tannins.
Well-regarded for intense and exceptionally high quality red wines, the Colchagua Valley is situated in the southern part of Chile’s Rapel Valley, with many of the best vineyards lying in the foothills of the Coastal Range.
Heavy French investment and cutting-edge technology in both the vineyard and the winery has been a boon to the local viticultural industry, which already laid claim to ancient vines and a textbook Mediterranean climate.
The warm, dry growing season in the Colchagua Valley favors robust reds made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenère, Malbec and Syrah—in fact, some of Chile’s very best are made here. A small amount of good white wine is produced from Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.