Caliterra

Winemaker Comment

This wine has an excellent appearance and exhibits an attractive deep dark red colour. The wine displays the same aromatic layers as in previous seasons. A stream of red fruit dominates on the nose, even though; it aged in barrels for more than a year. Reminiscences of dried plums come to the mind together with dried fruit aromas complemented by a mocha background.

On the palate the wine tastes sweet, but it’s only the flavour of the ripe tannins because technically this is a dry wine. With this mouth feeling, we think it was wise to wait for the precise moment to harvest. Our Malbec Tribute 2006 is very round and oily enriched by a long and pleasant aftertaste. If this Tasting Note is read from 2010 on, the colour will probably be like the bricks from Colchagua with intense creamy and leather notes on the nose. The mouth will remain the same in volume and weight.

Vintage Note

The 2005-2006 growing season was a cold, dry season. The accumulated heat summation measured in degree days (based on 10°C) between October 2005 and April 2006 was in almost all of the valleys lower than it was during the 2005 season and over the course of the past seven years.

The primary challenge of the 2006 vintage was the particularly long wait for each variety to reach proper phenolic maturity, which resulted in higher sugar levels in the grapes. As it was particularly cold in the Colchagua valley, the metabolism of the vines was much slower compared to normal years.

As the climatic circumstances were very favourable towards the end of the growing season and due to quality-oriented viticultural measures undertaken, the grapes were very healthy at the moment of harvesting.

Fermentation and Aging

This wine is easy to produce for Caliterra. The 2006 season enjoyed an excellent growing condition, even though we had to wait patiently up to the beginning of May until complete ripeness was achieved.

The fermentation in stainless steel tanks lasted one month. The wine aged in French and American oak barrels in which malolactic fermentation took place. During aging process, the wine was racked as necessary. The final blend was bottled in July 2007.