I tasted the full Montes range available during my last visit to Chile in the spring of 2002 and was rather horribly critical, finding many of what should have been their banker red wines just a bit too ripe and jammy for their own good.
I am delighted to report therefore that some sort of corner seems to have been turned with the 2001 vintage. All the 2001s I tasted were seriously well put together with nice lift, a dry finish and really appetising fruit.
While the Montes Alpha Cabernet and Merlot are very creditable, it was the Syrah – the baby Montes Folly if you will from rather less steep slopes in Montes' carefully tended Apalta vineyards near Casa Lapostolle – that particularly impressed me. Given backbone by about 10 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon, this warm-climate Syrah (very definitely not a Shiraz – no similarity to an Australian wine that I can see) is concentrated, sleek, rich and long and has real structure to it.
It is particularly well distributed in the US where, according to tasting notes in purple pages.
