Casas Del Bosque Collection Carmenere 2024
Good color, intense purple with violet hues. The wine is lively and vibrant, with notes of tobacco and spices. On the nose the fruit and tobacco leaf notes blend well with aromas of roasted coffee and cocoa from the barrel. The palate is balanced and consistent with the nose aromas. It has the juiciness of a young wine and the roundness of Carmenere. The sensation on the palate is of a voluptuous wine with soft tannins. An excellent representation of its origin.
“The 2024 Carménère Collection from Peumo, Cachapoal, aged in American oak. It opens with red pepper, paprika and red fruit notes in a slightly reductive register. Plush and creamy, with a juicy midpalate, the 2024 is an attractive take on the pyrazine style. 2025-2040”
91 points – Joaquin Hidalgo, Vinous
“This Carmenère offers a herbal character. The palate is filled with cherries and green peppery notes, backed by moderate freshness and soft tannins.”
88 Points – The Wine Enthusiast
The grapes come from a vineyard planted in the early 1990s in Almahue (Rapel Valley), an area recognized for producing some of Chile’s finest Carmenère. The vines grow in deep, well-drained loam soils with ample organic matter, creating ideal conditions for the variety. Almahue’s warm days, cool nights, and marked diurnal shifts help preserve freshness, while annual rainfall is concentrated in winter. The 2024 season was notably warm, with higher-than-normal temperatures during ripening. Hand-harvesting took place in the first half of April.
At the winery, the grapes were destemmed into stainless steel tanks, inoculated with selected yeasts, and co-inoculated for malolactic fermentation. After fermentation, the wine remained on skins for seven days before being pressed, with press fractions kept separate by quality. Aging was carried out in a mix of first-use French oak (10%), older French oak (65%), and stainless steel (25%) to balance complexity and freshness. The components were blended, filtered, and bottled, with total production reaching 13,500 cases.
Carménère is an inherently spicy variety, sharing some similarities with Cabernet Franc, and was once widespread in the Médoc region of Bordeaux. Today it is not possible to find it there since starting in 1867 a Phylloxera plague destroyed most of the original Carménère vines. Fast-forward about a century to the early 1990´s, and we find that somehow it made it to Chilean vineyards before disappearing in France, being rediscovered – and celebrated – by winemakers all over the South American country.
A late ripening variety, it can show too much greenness if picket too early, or risk messing with sugar concentrations if picked too late. That is why harvest precision is key, and getting the right environment to grow the vines is crucial. The Mediterranean climate around Almahue in the Rapel Valley, where Casas del Bosque sources these grapes, is an ideal place as the warmer climate makes possible a consistent, structured wine year after year. The winery, which has a coastal, cool climate identity, enjoys playing with a slightly higher acidity than normal in order to keep this Reserva´s style juicy, and inviting towards a second glass.
