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World-Best Wines in limited quantity from Chile and Spain at Niko's Wine Cellar in Duluth! Best wine from Chile

Seña 2017

Winemaker Notes

Hot and sunny days marked the 2017 season. Nevertheless, thanks to its privileged coastal location in the Aconcagua Valley -only 40 kilometers away from the Pacific Ocean - the cool breezes that blow in moderated the temperatures. This combination of factors allowed Seña to reach perfect ripeness with a unique balance between concentration and power alongside tension, elegance and freshness.

Blend: 52% Cabernet Sauvignon 15% Malbec 15% Carmenere 10% Cabernet Franc 8% Petit Verdot

99 James Suckling

The aromas of blackberries, cedar, sandalwood and black tea are compelling. Black olives. Rosemary and sage undertones. Full-bodied, rich and powerful Seña with impressive and powerful tannins, yet harmony and balance. Fruit-forward. Lightly chewy. Fresh and energetic wine in a hot year. Broad-shouldered. Drink after 2022.

97 Decanter

96 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

94 Wine Spectator

Behind the Bottle: Seña

The wine that brought international acclaim to its founder and put Chile on the wine map is still evolving, with a major announcement due soon, as Adam Lechmere discovers

There’s a shrine to Seña at the headquarters of Viña Errázuriz in Aconcagua. A circular room is ranged with backlit bottles; books of hand-written encomiums from the wine dignitaries of the last 20 years sit on lecterns. Pride of place is given to a great tome recounting the history of the Berlin Tasting, the 2004 event which did for Chilean wine what the Judgement of Paris did for California.

Berlin 2004 didn’t have the drama of Paris 1976, but the fact that Seña and its sister wine Viñedo Chadwick were rated blind, by a roomful of international wine eminences, against the great wines of Bordeaux, Napa and Tuscany and found superior, certainly made the wine press sit up and take notice.

Eduardo Chadwick, the owner of Errázuriz, has repeated the tasting many times (Berlin Tasting re-runs have become something of an industry) and Seña consistently out-performs its peers. Twenty-five years after he and Robert Mondavi decided to bring Chile to the attention of the wine world, Seña is unquestionably accepted as an international icon.

The origins of Seña

By the early 1990s, Chadwick had been running Viña Errázuriz, the winery founded by his ancestor Maximiano Errázuriz in 1870 and recently re-acquired by his father Alfonso, for a few years. He was keen to explore the possibilities of Chilean terroir and in 1991 he sought Robert Mondavi’s advice. The great Napa pioneer had launched Opus One a decade before, and he told the young Chadwick (Eduardo was then in his early 30s) that the way to put Chile on the map was to craft a wine in the classic Bordeaux tradition.

From the start, Seña was a grand experiment. Chile was emphatically not a wine country with any international profile – as Chadwick says, the most expensive Chilean wine in the UK would have been £5 at Victoria Wine. ‘When Bob came we were just trying to understand Chile. I had an idea of emulating the great estates of the world but not the full perspective of what we could do. It was Bob who saw the potential, and when he invited me to join forces it was like a dream.’

Mondavi and Chadwick planted in the coastal Ocoa range in Aconcagua

If there was experimentation, there was also a consistency of vision. ‘From day one the concept was for a holistic approach,’ Chadwick says. The vineyard was laid out by the celebrated landscape architect Juan Grimm, the vines winding around ravines and creeks to echo the contours of the surrounding hills. The mirador that looks down on the vineyard was designed, by the architect Germán del Sol, to seem as if it had grown from the hillside itself. Hundreds of names were tried and rejected. ‘It took a year. We thought of the moon, of the land, of rocks, of symphonies. “Rocas” was one idea. We finally decided on a name that means “sign” as well as the “signature” of two families creating a great wine.’

The first vintages were well-received (Oz Clarke, writing in the current issue of Club Oenologique magazine, still rates the 1996 his favourite of the early Señas). It went down well in the US: as part of the Robert Mondavi Corporation it was sold alongside wines such as Opus One, Luce, Ornellaia and Robert Mondavi Reserve. By the early part of the new century, Chadwick was beginning to think that his wine might be ready to take its place at the high table.

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