Almaviva: ‘Our track record has changed the game’

Having 20 years of back vintages under its belt has “changed the game” for Chilean fine wine Almaviva according to its chief winemaker Michel Friou.

Almaviva’s chief winemaker, Michel Friou

Speaking to the drinks business during a recent trip to Chile, Friou said: “We would have liked for people to have taken the wines more seriously earlier on but now Almaviva has 20 vintage under its belt we have the chance to show our track record like the top wines from Montes and Errazuriz.

“In order to be taken seriously we needed that track record, which has changed the game completely. It used to be hard for us to sell our back vintages at a higher price but it’s getting easier – today we can sell older vintages for 15-20% more than the release price of the current vintage.

“We started selling en primeur but stopped as the wine was too new for it to work in the system, but we hold back more of the wine than we used to.

“The idea is to produce more and hold more back like they do in Bordeaux, so we can start selling back vintages. We currently make around 15,000 cases a year and want to start holding back 1,000 cases.”

Friou told db that he’d love Almavia to thrive at auction but said that the brand is still too young to make serious inroads on the auction circuit at the moment.

Looking at the bigger picture, Friou believes the most important job for Chilean wineries now is to successfully tell the story of the country’s incredible diversity.

“Chile has diversified dramatically over the last few years pushing the limits of viticulture from north to south and east to west, and from the coast to the mountains,” he said.

“We still need to be more selective about what we plant where. The biggest job we have to do today is co-ordinate this explosion of diversity and find a way to promote our new wine regions in the best possible way,” he added.

The big next step for Almaviva is to develop and promote its second wine, Epu (meaning ‘second’ in Mapudungun), which is predominantly sold in Chile and Brazil and has an annual production of around 3,000 bottles.

“We want to start selling it in Asia and Japan, which are big markets for us,” Friou said.

While Chile’s diversity of grapes, regions and wine styles is exciting, Friou believes Cabernet is still king in the country and needs to be looked after.

“Cabernet is still super important in Chile and something we need to take good care of. Outside of Maipo, I think Cabernet is always better in blends than on its own,” he said.

“There is a trend for picking Cabernet earlier in Chile now but you need a certain level of ripeness. With low yielding fine wines you can play with ripeness but for high volume wines you need ripeness for them to work,” he added.

Almaviva is a joint venture between Concha y Toro and Bordeaux first growth Château Mouton Rothschild, which set out in 1997 with the aim of creating a New World first growth.

Comprising of 65 hectares in Puente Alto, the Cabernet dominant wine also includes small percentages of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.