Seña 2018

The beginning of Seña traces back to Eduardo Chadwick's trips to Napa in the 1990s, where he met Robert Mondavi.  Eduardo Chadwick's family owns Viña Errázuriz.  Mondavi visited Chile in 1993 and Eduardo was the one to drive him around. Mondavi was delighted with the potential he saw, but there was really no quality wine to show the world the potential of Chile.  As a result, Seña was established as a collaborative venture between Viña Errázuriz and Robert Mondavi.  Its mission was to make a Bordeaux style blend including Carmenere to give it a Chilean character. In 2005, Eduardo Chadwick bought Mondavi’s 50 percent, and since then it has been a Chadwick family winery, and a personal project of Eduardo Chadwick.  The vineyards have been worked biodynamically since 2005.  Eduardo's ambition is to create a Chilean icon wine, one which fully expresses the terroir (wine identity linked to local soil, aspect and climate) of the Aconcagua Valley, north of Santiago.  The wine world has recognized his success.  In 2004, in a blind tasting event hosted in Berlin that has since become known as the Berlin Tasting, Seña 2001 came in 2nd to its brethren wine Viñedo Chadwick 2000 (which was ranked 1st), forcing the venerable Château Lafite Rothschild 2000 to the 3rd position. 

Sena’s hillside vineyard is on the cooler side of the Aconcagua valley (the limit to ripen Cabernet and Carmenere), extending over 45 hectares planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenere, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Syrah. The colluvial soils on the valley’s slopes contain a variety of textures and stone proportions, resulting in a great diversity of well-drained gravel, rock and loam. The backbone of the wine is Cabernet Carmenere, complemented with the other grapes.

Winemaker's Notes

“Deep and beautiful ruby red in colour with a bright violet glimmer. The nose offers gorgeous aromas of blueberries, cherries, and violets framed by light notes of nuts, fine pastry, and a lingering touch of truffle that lends elegance. The palate is in perfect agreement with the nose while adding delicate notes of rose petals. It is fresh and juicy and full of life, with elegant, fine-grained tannins that are both firm yet delicate and speak of a wine with tremendous ageing potential.”

Tasting Notes

"The 2018 Seña shows the fresher side of the Ocoa zone of the Aconcagua Valley through a Bordeaux blend of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Malbec, 15% Carmenere, 7% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot; there are small differences, but nothing substantial. As I've seen in other wines from the very complete 2018 vintage, the grapes ripened thoroughly and achieved more flavors and nuances, and the wines are slightly higher in alcohol (14% this year versus 13.3% in 2017, but in reality it's 13.8% ). But the wine seems to have more of everything. The grapes fermented in a combination of stainless steel and concrete vats and matured in new barriques and Stockinger foudres for 22 months, a similar formula as the one used for Viñedo Chadwick. This is a very elegant vintage of Seña, a year with a slow ripening so that the grapes achieved very good ripeness and full development of aromas and flavors, making the wine nuanced and complex, with depth but also freshness and finesse—floral and expressive. The tannins are very fine, polished and elegant, and the wine is long and complex, mixing the best f 2015 and 2016, coming through as a very complete year. It's still a little young and should develop nicely in bottle; it's approachable now, but if you can hold it a little bit more, it should be even better. This has to be the finest vintage of Seña to date. Comparing it with the Chadwick from the same year, there is more freshness and a little more complexity and clout coming form the cooler zone and the palette of varieties used that give more options to achieve more nuance. 100,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in February and March 2020." - Luis Gutiérrez, Robert Parker's Wine Advocate (8/31/2020, Issue 250), Ratings: 98, Drink: 2021-2035