Montes Alpha Pinot Noir has ripe cherries and raspberries, white pepper and a touch of violets on the nose. Medium-bodied, the palate has silky, smooth tannins, fresh and vibrant acidity, and shows well-integrated French oak. The long and perfumed finish is smooth and elegant.

About the Producer

Montes Wines was established in 1988 after the addition of two further partners, Alfredo Vidaurre and Pedro Grand to the original visionary partners, Aurelio Montes and Douglas Murray.  Murray and Montes both had extensive experience in the world of wine and wished to make their dream come true of being the people responsible for raising the bar for the quality of wine production in Chile.  The four men all made exemplary contributions to creating and establishing 'Discover Wine Ltda' now known as Viña Montes.

Aurelio Montes has since said of their venture "The Viña Montes adventure was almost a retirement project for us. We wanted to make a small, boutique-type vineyard to entertain ourselves the day we were definitely retired and that would also allow us to show off good wines in international markets."

Vineyard and Winemaking

The Pinot Noir vineyards are planted on gently rolling hills with different aspects and are trained to vertical shoot position. The sites are irrigated via a 'Sustainable Dry Farmed' system, developed by Aurelio and his team, which allows for extremely precise and minimal irrigating, reducing their water footprint by 65%. The vines only require minimal work with the canopy, which enables the growers to obtain healthy grapes with good balance at harvest time. Yields vary between 7,000 and 8,000 kilograms per hectare. The proximity of the vineyards to the Pacific coast endows the wine with tremendous freshness, minerality, and cool climate typicity. The granitic soils of the Coastal Mountains have varying percentages of clay, which contributes elegance, creaminess and a unique sense of place.

At the winery, clusters were carefully inspected before they were destemmed and cold soaked at 8°C for five days to extract aroma and colour, a method that's especially important for thinskinned Pinot Noir. Different maceration and fermentation techniques were used, including: carbonic maceration; fermentation of destemmed and semi-destemmed grapes, and use of whole clusters. Some of the must was fermented at low temperatures to preserve the fresh fruit character of the variety. This process lasted around seven days, during which two punchdowns were performed daily, to extract colour delicately from the skins and juice from the berries. After malolactic conversion, 40% was racked into 225-litre French oak barrels, of which one-third was new, and the rest of second or third use. The wine spent a minimum of 10 months in barrel before it was blended with a small amount of unoaked wine, lightly filtered and bottled.

Visit the Montes website