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Buy any 12 bottles and save 10% (excludes wines on offer). Free UK delivery on orders over £100. Tel: 02922 337454
Buy any 12 bottles and save 10% (excludes wines on offer). Free UK delivery on orders over £100. Tel: 02922 337454
2018 Antiguas Reservas Merlot, Cousino Macul Wine Republic

2018 Antiguas Reservas Merlot, Cousino Macul

Maipo Valley, Chile

Maipo Velvet

Smooth, refined and quietly expressive, the 2018 Antiguas Reservas Merlot shows just how graceful Chilean Merlot can be when richness is matched by restraint. Ripe red berries, cherry and raspberry rise first, followed by a gentle smoky note and a soft layer of vanilla that adds polish rather than weight. The palate is vibrant and beautifully balanced, with lush red fruit, medium-high acidity and polished tannins giving the wine both freshness and shape. There is generosity here, certainly, but it is carried with elegance, finishing long, persistent and softly savoury.

For when: the food is slow-cooked, the lights are low, and the bottle needs quiet confidence.
Pairs with: roast duck, mushroom risotto, grilled pork, or hard cheeses with a little age.
If this wine were a place: an old Maipo estate at dusk, with cedar in the air and the Andes fading into shadow.

Cousiño Macul is one of Chile’s historic benchmark estates, family-owned since 1856 and still rooted in the Maipo Valley. The Antiguas Reservas range is reserved for wines with extra ageing potential and varietal precision, and the Merlot is matured in French oak barrels to build texture, depth and finesse. The estate also highlights its heritage through ungrafted vines and its own massal selections, giving the wines a strong sense of continuity as well as place.

Whats in the bottle
100% Merlot

Notable Awards
92/100, Tim Atkin MW

£17.95 - £17.95
£17.95
£17.95 - £17.95
£17.95
Availability:
In stock

Founded in 1856, Cousiño-Macul is the only 19th-century winery in Chile that remains in the hands of the original founding family. All Cousiño-Macul reserve wines are estate-grown, vinted and bottled. After seven generations and over 150 years, Cousiño-Macul’s mission rings clear — to produce world-class wines that are unmistakably Chilean, carrying the distinctive character of the Maipo Valley.

In 1994, the capital city of Santiago had expanded to the point of completely surrounding the original Macul estate in the southeast of the city, so the search for an additional single estate vineyard location began. In May 1996, the Cousiño family bought 750 acres of land in Buin, an agriculturally rich subregion of the Maipo Valley, about 20 miles southeast of Santiago. The Buin estate met the Cousiños’ ambitious criteria of soil composition, climate and proximity to the Andes Mountains.

All Cousiño-Macul wines are made entirely with grapes sourced from its two estates located in the Maipo Valley. Both the Macul estate in the southeast of Santiago and the estate in Buin are part of the subregion known as Alto Maipo. The Alto Maipo is appropriately named due to its high altitude orientation at the foot of the Andes Mountains. As the snow melts in the spring and summer, the Andes provide an ample source of pure, fresh water for vineyard irrigation. The soil is especially suited for the production of high-quality grapes: shallow, sandy-silky topsoil with rough stone below. All vines are planted on original root systems. Vines for new plantations come from massal selections carried out in the nurseries at Macul over a period of 10 years. This selection has allowed the preservation of genetic material of great value, originally brought to Chile by Luis Cousiño in 1860, including Cabernet and Merlot varieties from Pauillac in Haut-Medoc, and Sauvignon Gris from Martillac in Graves.

Grape
Merlot

Alcohol by Volume
14%

Vintage
2018

Country
Chile

Size
750ml

Types
Red Wine

Producer
Cousino Macul

Region
Maipo Valley