2022 Concha y Toro 'Don Melchor' Cabernet Sauvignon Puente Alto
From the foot of the Andes, Chile’s most iconic Cabernet returns with serious pedigree and even more power. The 2022 Don Melchor is a masterfully built wine from the Puente Alto Vineyard’s oldest parcels—some up to 45 years old—blending 95% Cabernet Sauvignon with dashes of Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. With its hallmark structure, precision, and poise, it delivers cassis, crushed stone, tobacco, and violets wrapped in a taut, elegant frame.
This is high-altitude Cabernet at its finest—crafted by winemaker Enrique Tirado and sourced from micro-parceled plots averaging 38-year-old vines, rooted in stony, low-fertility soils that naturally limit yields and intensify expression.
Following Wine Spectator’s #1 Wine of the Year (2021 vintage), this 2022 release is poised to cement Don Melchor’s global elite status.
Chile’s First Growth delivers again—secure your bottles at this special pre-sale price while they last.
James Suckling
Blackcurrants, cassis and graphite on the nose. Pure and fragrant. Full-bodied with superb density and tannins that are so polished. The texture is like touching a silk ball. Its finish is very long and compact with slightly chewy tannins, but it will come together beautifully with time in the bottle. Try after 2028.
Vinous
The 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Don Melchor originates from a vineyard planted in the heart of the Puente Alto region in 1979. This is renowned Cabernet Sauvignon terroir, characterized by the perfect balance of temperatures and poor gravel soils. The 2022 was aged in French oak barrels, with 78% of them being new. Garnet-hued with a purplish sheen, it offers complex aromas of currant, blackberry, ash, mint and a subtle floral tone that can be attributed to the cold vintage. Dry, rich and moderately juicy, the precisely calibrated tannins of Maipo Valley and the clear fruit impart the palate with intensity and agility. This is a more nuanced and energetic edition of Don Melchor, closing with a fairly compact finish.
Wine Spectator
Elegant, nuanced and concentrated, with a loamy-clay cast to the fresh thyme and subtle tuberose aromas, which give way to a rich yet balanced core of blackberry and cassis notes lifted by saline-edged acidity. Wonderfully fresh while moving toward the finish, where the flavors come together and linger harmoniously around well-formed tannins. Drink now through 2040. 17,800 cases made, 3,500 cases imported.
Wine Advocate
94+ The 2022 Don Melchor spent 15 months in 72% new oak barrels and lands somewhere between the open-knit ease of 2021 and the tense introversion of 2020. A coiled, dark-fruited nose of tobacco leaves, dried herbs, graphite and dark chocolate transitions to a slow-moving, velvety palate. It concludes with a taut, inward finish of gently chewy tannins that regenerates the graphite-laden intensity found on the nose. With time in the glass, its structural burliness softened and melded with additional layers of chocolate-driven richness. This could possibly merit a higher score with additional time in bottle to slightly congeal the finish. It's a blend of 94% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Cabernet Franc, 2% Merlot and 1% Petit Verdot.