Domus Aurea Winter

Library Wines from Chile Now Available Direct from Top Estates

/in /by

When wine lovers discuss which bottles they should age, the conversation usually begins with the great wines of Bordeaux, Barolo and Burgundy. This is understandable, but the reality is that every serious wine region — Old World and New — can produce ageworthy wines. The trick is knowing which questions to ask about the bottle on the rack.

Chile is almost always left out of the conversation, perhaps because its wine industry didn’t really start modernizing until the early 1990s. Enough time has passed, however, for certain estates to pull away from the rest. Their wines receive critical acclaim year after year, and yes, they have been proven to age. The bottom line is that Chile deserves a place at the table.

An “ageworthy” wine can transform over time into something more complex. It becomes “more” than it was when it was bottled. This applies to white and red wines. What do these wines have in common?

  • Pedigree. This means that the vineyards behind the wines have the perfect combination of sun and soil for the grape varieties planted there. Many sites in Chile’s Colchagua Valley, for example, have proven ideal for Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Gamay? Not so much.
  • Balance. The winemaker must be as good as the site. The best winemakers know how to make balanced wines, or wines in which the alcohol, acidity, fruit and oak are in perfect harmony. A wine that tastes strongly of oak in its youth will taste even more oaky over time as the fruit begins to fade. A wine with bitingly high acid will not shed its tartness.
  • Midpalate density. Wine Spectator‘s Matt Kramer rightfully argues that wines “die from the inside out.” This means that a wine must have a certain “density” or “stuffing” to stand the test of time. Try this. Take a sip of wine, and if the flavor dies almost immediately, it doesn’t have a good midpalate. The wine can still be enjoyable, but don’t age it for ten years.
  • Packaging. A wine needs a high-quality cork to protect it from excessive oxygen. The size of the bottle also makes a difference. In large formats such as magnums (1.5L), there is more wine in the bottle for oxygen to impact, so it takes longer for the wine to evolve.

GVI Wines now offers library wines from Chile that share these attributes. Over the last two decades, two estates in particular — Domus Aurea and Maquis — have become benchmark producers in the Maipo and Colchagua Valleys respectively. Each estate consistently produces red wines that score in the mid to high 90s from the world’s most respected reviewers.

We are fortunate to have acquired a limited number of library and large-format bottlings direct from these estates, ensuring perfect storage conditions for long-term ageing. The following library wines from Chile are available now:

Alba de Domus

Calcu Futa

Domus Aurea

Maquis Franco

Maquis Lien

Penalolen

Please contact us here to inquire about library vintages from other producers.