£13.99, $22.84, €16.98, B$103
This wine, one of the first from Paredones, a new, super-cool Chilean region, just gets better and better. I first tasted it just over a year ago (see this review) and was impressed by how nervy, firm and smoky it was (I saw a parallel with the delicious PHI Sauvignons from the cooler reaches of the Yarra Valley in Australia) but I wrote 'You could enjoy it now but I suspect it will be better in a few months'. The other day, I had the chance to re-taste it and indeed, it is even more delicious. It still has wonderful definition and precision but the fruit has opened out a bit to present whitecurrant fruit as well as all the initial leafiness. This unoaked wine seems so much more sophisticated than most Chilean Sauvignons. However worthy some of them can be, most strike me as a little sweet, whereas this one is bone dry. It seems to me that it would go much better with food than most Sauvignons.
Paredones is the name of a town between the famous Apalta cluster of top vineyards in Colchagua and the coast, and this wine is made from vines that benefit from the cooling Pacific influence that is responsible for so many fine, cool-climate wines the length of North and South America's western coast. You can see that I was also impressed by a St Helena Sauvignon Blanc 2009 made from vines grown here.
It's good to see that Casa Silva, Cool Coast Sauvignon Blanc 2010 Paredones (although note that Paredones is not – yet? – an official appellation) is in the new, improved selection available in the recently revived Wine Rack shops as well as from Averys in the UK. The wine is also available in the US, Brazil and Holland. Prices are unusually similar whichever the market.
It seemed particularly appropriate to feature this wine this week as the innovative Casa Silva boast as technical overseer Mario Geisse, the Chilean whose personal project is Cave Geisse, producer of the most impressive 1998 Brazilian sparkling wine which kicked off my Beyond Bordeaux tasting in Hong Kong on Monday night at WineFuture. It was good to see his son Daniel, who works closely with him in both Brazil and Chile, at this international get-together.
I look forward to seeing how this wine and this region develop over time, and I marvel at how energetically Chilean wine producers are finding and developing new, cooler regions.
