Garage Wine Co. Isidore Vineyard Semillon 2020
-
James
Suckling -
Robert
Parker - Vinous
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
Very attractive and tangy nose, showing fresh orange and tangerine with loquat and a hint of resin, jasmine tea and saffron. Nicely chewy, with some structure and weight, showing good phenolics and natural, fresh acidity and a supple center-palate. Zingy, with some mango at the end.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The flinty and faintly reductive 2020 Isidore Vineyard Maule Valley Semillon is part of what they call Fieldcraft Bottlings, "wines we make when we see an old vineyard that screams of potential but does not 'fit' into the modern wine trade: too small to fill a truck, too far away from a paved road, too narrow to be worked with a tractor. . ." Mossman explained a bit more, "As mainstream wants the small modernize ‘like everybody else’: spray instead of cultivate, scale instead of focus, above all reduce the cost of labour—it’s the labor that unlocks the flavor of the wisdom of farming passed down through the ages. We call this wisdom: fieldcraft." I was blown away by the 2018, the first vintage of this wine, and the 2019 and 2020 are brilliant too and seem to have different personalities. This is a little rounder and softer, obviously younger and less developed. When I asked him about the vineyard, he said, "uncertified organic for 60+ years." Amen.
-
Vinous
The 2020 Semillón Isidore Vineyard F3 from Empedrado Maule was aged in clay, flexi-tanks and barrels. Light golden in color. The oxidative profile features honey, basil, and hints of wet stone and quince or even custard apple. Creamy, with malic tension; the fatty core delivers a slightly rugged texture, fresh flow and lengthy, fruity flavor.
Sémillon has the power to create wines with considerable structure, depth and length that will improve for several decades. It is the perfect partner to the vivdly aromatic Sauvignon Blanc. Sémillon especially shines in the Bordeaux region of Sauternes, which produces some of the world’s greatest sweet wines. Somm Secret—Sémillon was so common in South Africa in the 1820s, covering 93% of the country’s vineyard area, it was simply referred to as Wyndruif, or “wine grape.”
Maule is the Central Valley’s most southern and coolest zone, reaching a southern latitude of 35°S, yet it is still warmer and drier than Bío-Bío to its south. The Maule Valley enjoys success with a unique set of grapes.
It lays claim to the local variety, Pais (synonymous with Tinta Pais, which is actually Tempranillo), which has dominated much of the region’s area under vine until the recent past. Now many growers, not confined by the tradition and regulations of the Old World, also successfully grow Cabernet Sauvignon.
While Maule’s total area under vine remains relatively static, its old Carignan vineyards are undergoing a great revival. The VIGNO (Vignadores del Carignan Vintners) group, an association in charge of promoting this long-forgotten variety, is getting fantastic results from the old vines in its dry-farmed coastal zones.
The Maule includes the subregions of Talca, San Clemente, San Javier, Parral, Linares and Cauquenes.