Mistral Carmenere 2010 - Naked Wines

One of the most notable things about Naked Wines' retail model is their use of social media, and anyone who has used amazon recently will probably find it quite familiar with its various groups, product reviews by customers and a plethora of statistics on what people are buying and rating.

Another familiar feature is personalised recommendations, based presumably on the ratings you give to the wines you liked.

In this case, this Mistral Carménère from Chile was apparently recommended to me by one of my online "buddies" - obviously someone I've never met in real life or know anything about, but as I'm always happy to try out something new and all of Naked's wines come with a satisfaction guarantee anyway, I thought "Why not ?" and added it to my order.

Carménère originated in Bordeaux, but is now mostly associated with Chile where for years it was mistakenly believed to be Merlot.

For a while, it was spoken of as possibly Chile's new signature red grape, but the country seems to be doing well enough with international varieties not to need a the gimmick of a "signature grape" schtick, so the wine can be assessed on its own merits alone.

The nose is quite complex, but somehow hard to define - there is bramble fruit, spice and hints of forest floor.

The palate shows black cherries, blackcurrant and, with time, a hint of inkiness and pencil shavings, some clove and pepper spice.

There is lively, juicy, linear acidity and soft, gentle tannins on the finish with a slight touch of toastiness.

It's not a dead-ringer for the Merlot it was historically mistaken for, but it does share many Merlot's characteristics - juicy acidity and low tannins especially.

Like most of Naked's wines - and especially their top-rated ones - it impresses straight out of the bottle with lots of ripe, up-front fruit whilst being well-made and more-ish.

There is precious little detail about the wine on the Naked website - "Chile", "other red grapes" and "easy-drinking red" is about it, but for those familiar with Naked's house style, that does pretty much sum it up.

Mistral Carménère £7.49 from Naked Wines (Angels get 33% cashback) - for more on Naked's Angels scheme, see here.

Links

Naked Wines - https://www.nakedwines.com/