Home >Wine Store >Apaltagua Envero Carmenère

Dark plum, raspberry, cherry, leather chocolate and black licorice.

Chile's Apaltagua winery makes wines exclusively from Carmenère, a red grape that yields fruity, earthy wines similar to Merlot. With its mellifluous name, you'd be right to guess that Carmenère (car-men-YAIR) is native to France. But this red grape ripens too late for Bordeaux, where it originated, and the French abandoned it. Chile is another story. In its longer growing season, Carmenère produces lush, chocolaty reds with plump fruit flavors. This blackberry-rich bottling was made by álvaro Espinoza, a prominent Chilean winemaker who was one of the first to realize that much of the country's supposed Merlot vines were actually this long-lost variety.

This wine deserves hearty red meat, game or pork dishes with a bit of spice or richness, like peppercorncrusted steaks, burgers with onion jam or glazed pork roast. The Apaltagua's's rich fruit makes a perfect foil for my Baby Back Ribs with Espresso BBQ Sauce. The espresso is blended with honey, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar to create a flavor combination that is rich, rewarding and out of this world. Serve this with my Roasted Potato Salad and let me know what time I should be over.

Sometimes called the "next Napa," the Colchagua Valley is located about 80 miles southwest of Santiago. It is about 75 miles long and averages 22 miles in width and enjoys a balmy, Mediterranean climate with abundant and extraordinarily luminous sunshine.