Producer · Valle del Maule, Chile

Morande

Pablo Morandé was the first person to plant vines in the Casablanca Valley, and that is the fact worth knowing about him. Casablanca is now one of the districts Chile is best known for, and Morandé got there before anybody else. He founded Viña Morandé in 1996 and is still active on the board.

He comes from Cauquenes, in the Maule, and that country is still at the heart of the business. The winery works the interior secano of Maule and Itata, the old dry-farmed vineyards inland, and sees that work as rescuing part of Chile's viticultural heritage. They make Carignan in Maule under VIGNO, the rules for wine from old, dry-farmed Carignan vines, and they have a vineyard at Ránquil in Itata. Their cellar is underground and gravity-fed. If you want to understand what this company is about, that is where to look.

They are not a small operation. Viña Morandé is part of the Morandé Wine Group, and the wines run from serious, site-driven bottlings to an everyday range from the Valle del Maule. They still make Pinot Noir in Casablanca, a grape that only works in cool sites like that. It is worth knowing which end of the range you are drinking from.

Carménère is the grape worth understanding here. It is the variety Chile has made its own, and it grew in Chilean vineyards unrecognised, mistaken for Merlot, until it was identified in 1994. It gives a red with dark fruit and a savoury, herbal edge that is quite unlike Merlot. Morandé make both, and tasting the two side by side will teach you more in one evening than any amount of description from me.

These are well-made, honest wines from a producer with a genuinely interesting history and a much more serious range than the everyday end suggests.

Winery at Pelequén, Valle del Maule · Merlot and Carménère · £13.33 a bottle