Vancouver Sun

PROVENÇAL FISH SOUP

Hearty, healthy comfort food

- ANTHONY GISMONDI

The first time I tasted Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon — the wine — was in the early 1990s in Chile.

It was then I learned of Don Melchor Concha y Toro — the man — born in Santiago in 1834. A renowned lawyer and entreprene­ur, he played an influentia­l role in Chilean public life during the second half of the 19th century. Exploring the world of wine came at the age of 50 when he married Emiliana Subercasea­ux Vicuna, from whom he inherited the Pirque family estate in the Maipo Valley.

Melchor planted the first pre-phylloxera French vines at Pirque that 150 years later would morph into the revered Puente Alto D.O., one of Chile's best terroirs.

Melchor set out to build a great red wine and worked with a Bordeaux winemaker, Monsieur Labouchere, who, like many of the Europeans who followed, marvelled at the terroir of the Maipo. Alas, Melchor died before the project came to fruition. It would be another century before the modern-day owner of Concha Y Toro would engage with Bordeaux winemaker Jacques Boissenot to pick up the Don Melchor baton.

The first Concha y Toro Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon to make it to the bottle was the 1987 vintage, and now, three decades later, Don Melchor has moved to a stand-alone, independen­t winery. The plan is to let Vina Don Melchor stand apart from the Vina Concha y Toro portfolio to tell the story of its Puente Alto property some 18 kilometres south of Santiago near the foot of the Andes Mountains.

By 1997, the Don Melchor Vineyard was attracting French vintners interested in making

Chilean wine. It wasn't long before Baron Philippe de Rothschild S.A., owners of the legendary Chateau Mouton Rothschild, joined Concha y Toro to create a super-chilean red named Almaviva, a Bordeaux blend that shares the same vineyard site as Don Melchor.

I well remember the developmen­t because I wondered if Almaviva would rob Don Melchor of its best Cabernet Sauvignon fruit. Indeed, Almaviva went on to become one of the top two or three wines made in Chile every year since, yet Melchor maintained its quality and got better over the succeeding years. When I asked how the grapes were to be split up, Don Melchor winemaker Enrique Tirado said that the fruit (the rows, the blocks of vines) that the French chose were in almost every case different in flavour and style than the fruit the Chileans were looking to put into Don Melchor. Problem solved.

The Don Melchor vineyard sits along the northern bank of the Maipo River in the Maipo Valley some 650 meters above sea level, in one of the coldest areas in the Alto Maipo Valley. The vineyard is planted with pre-phylloxera vines that arrived from France in the mid-19th century. Thousands of years of erosion caused by the movement of glaciers and rain have carried a mountain of low nutrient materials of clay, silt, sand, gravel and round stones that make up the soils at Melchor.

The vineyard comprises 127 hectares, split into 90 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon, 7.1 per cent Cabernet Franc, 1.9 per cent Merlot and 1 per cent Petit Verdot. Over the decades, the fruit has been subdivided into seven Cabernet Sauvignon parcels and small parcels of Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot because more choice better deals with the vagaries of any growing season.

The latest 2017 release (see

our note in the Weekend Picks) is one of the best Don Melchor I have tasted and a true testament to the work that has been done in Chile over the last 30 years.

Interestin­gly here in B.C., we are celebratin­g 30 years of VQA wines in 2020, and while we don't have a long history of wine growing, we have some special sites. With so much informatio­n at our fingertips we are closing the quality gap quickly with many countries.

We need only dream big, like Don Melchor.

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 ??  ?? Enjoy this Provençal fish soup, from Dinner Uncomplica­ted by Claire Tansey, with a dry rose or white.
Enjoy this Provençal fish soup, from Dinner Uncomplica­ted by Claire Tansey, with a dry rose or white.

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