Carménère: The Great Lost Grape of Bordeaux, Found and Thriving in Chile.

A good wine should have a good story. Carménère has one, and it is worth telling.

Like the majority of the world’s prominent grapes, Carménère was born in the French wine region of Bordeaux. It was used as both a blending grape for the famous red Bordeaux wines (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Carménère) as well as to create its own single varietal wine. It was finicky and difficult to grow. Consequently, when the great phylloxera plague wiped out nearly every grape in France in 1857, growers did not bother replanting it.

For over 100 years, Carménère had been considered nearly extinct.

Prior to the epidemic, cuttings were taken from top vineyards in Europe to establish wine in the immigrant settlements of South America. A few cuttings of Carménère happened to be imported to Chile in shipments of merlot vines. And they simply planted them in their merlot fields around the valleys of Santiago and almost immediately began to flourish. In Chile, growers almost inadvertently preserved the grape variety due largely to its similarity to Merlot. It was an unconscious mistake that saved Carménère from extinction. The variety is now Chile's premium grape.

Up until the 1990s, Chilean winemakers were not sure why some of the vines in their Merlot vineyards got ripe so late and why their leaves were so different. Their Merlot tasted very “distinctive.” So in 1994, they brought in a respected French botanist, Jean-Michel Boursiquot, who, after some study, declared the vines weren’t Merlot at all. They were Carménère.

Today, Carménère is to Chile as Malbec is to Argentina.

For a full Carménère Wine Guide you can visit: http://winefolly.com/review/carmenere-wine-guide/