Clos des Fous Grillos Cantores Cachapoal Cabernet Sauvignon 2020
£15.45
The wine
Beautiful ruby red, with an intense nose of red fruits and black cherries alongside spice.
Cachapoal Andes, on the mountain side of the valley, where cold night air spilling off the Andes preserves acidity. Chilean vines grow on their own roots, phylloxera having never reached the country. The name means enclosure of the madmen, chosen for the sites they went after: Malleco far to the south where the growing season barely stretches, high Andean parcels, and old ground written off as too cold or too remote to bother with.
The producer
Clos des Fous
View all Clos des Fous winesClos des Fous, the enclosure of the madmen, is a boundary-pushing Chilean project founded by a group including the acclaimed winemaker Pedro Parra and terroir expert François Massoc. The name captures its spirit, a fearless search for unusual sites and forgotten terroirs. This is Chile at its most adventurous.
The team seeks out extreme, often overlooked vineyards, from the cool coast of Aconcagua to the granite of Itata and the far-southern Malleco valley. These marginal sites, high, cold or ancient, yield wines of tension and freshness rarely found in Chile. Terroir, not power, is the goal.
In the cellar the approach is precise and low-intervention, letting each singular site express itself. The wines range from taut Chardonnay and fragrant Pinot Noir to old-vine field blends of País and Cinsault. Freshness and drinkability run through them all.
Clos des Fous offers a thrilling, different vision of Chilean wine, cool, mineral and full of character. From everyday reds to serious single-site bottlings, these are wines for the curious and the adventurous.
