Eduardo Chadwick on Chile’s fine wine legacy and evolution

Eduardo Chadwick, the 2018 recipient of Decanter’s Hall of Fame award, has been instrumental in elevating Chile to the international fine wine stage.

As the country transitioned to democracy, and opened up to international markets, Chadwick finished his university degree and went on to become one of the most important faces in the swift modernisation of Chile’s wine industry.

He is the fourth generation of the Errázuriz-Chadwick family to take the the helm of Viñedos Familia Chadwick, and his unwavering belief in the potential country’s terroir to produce world-class wines has seen him become a natural ambassador for Chilean wine.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of old and new vintages of Errázuriz and Seña

Over the past three decades Chadwick has nurtured a pool of viticulture and winemaking experts who have become renowned in their own right, while future-proofing the legacy of not only the Errázuriz portfolio of wines but also of Seña, his personal project.

After 20 years as chief winemaker at Errázuriz and Seña, Francisco Baettig passed the baton to 32-year-old Tomás Muñoz at the end of 2023. Muñoz now leads a young, diverse team of oenologists and viticulturalists. Meanwhile, two of Chadwick’s four daughters have also taken leading roles in the business.

The Berlin Tasting

For years Chadwick had harboured a deep frustration with a global lack of recognition and appreciation of Chilean wines. He believed this lack of awareness precluded a fair assessment of Chile’s best labels.

Chadwick’s moment of epiphany arrived in the early 2000s with the idea for a tasting like the 1976 Judgement of Paris showing his flagship wines alongside 100-point Bordeaux first growths and Super Tuscans.

The tasting took place in Berlin on 23 January 2004 and was hosted by Chadwick, Decanter’s Steven Spurrier (who organised the 1976 Judgement of Paris between Californian and French wines) and René Gabriel (one of the foremost German-speaking wine critics at the time). Some 36 experts from around the world blind tasted 16 wines (six Chilean, six French and four Italian wines).

The results were both surprising and significant: Chadwick’s Viñedo Chadwick 2000 and Seña 2001 won first and second places respectively. The announcement of these results represented a landmark moment for Chilean fine wine.

A March 2024 tasting in London marked the 20th anniversary of what became known as the Berlin Tasting – and the 10th anniversary of the 10-year world tour that followed it, where new vintages achieved consistently eye-opening results.

The London event also launched the 2021 vintage of Errázuriz’s four flagship wines, Seña, Viñedo Chadwick, Don Maximiano Founder’s Reserve and Kai, whose tasting notes can also be seen here.

Cabernet Sauvignon, unmistakably Chilean

The London tasting was bookmarked by journeys through two different, yet both very Chilean, Cabernet Sauvignons: Don Maximiano Founder’s Reserve (Don Max) and Viñedo Chadwick.

Each wine is a tribute to a key figure in the history of Errázuriz: Don Maximiliano Errázuriz, Chadwick’s great-grandfather and founder of the original family estate; and his father, Don Alfonso Chadwick, who took over the family business in the 1980s and set the stage for his son’s success.

The four vintages of Don Max tasted at the London event showed the evolution from a single-variety Cabernet Sauvignon to a Cabernet-based Bordeaux blend. French geologist Françoise Vannier-Petit was instrumental in increasingly attuning the wine to the nuances of terroir and vintage.

It was fascinating to observe how the inaugural 1984 vintage still showed vibrancy and purity 40 years on, a testament to the quality of the selected Aconcagua Valley plots that produced it.

Chadwick wanted to plant the Viñedo Chadwick vineyard on the gravel soils of his father’s prized polo field. Don Alfonso – considered one of the greatest players in the history of Chilean polo – at first resisted the idea, but ultimately accepted it as a tribute to his dual roles as a leading athlete and visionary wine entrepreneur.

The four vintages of Viñedo Chadwick tasted showed an evolution towards elegance and filigreed aromatics. The 2014 vintage stood out, representing a point of arrival in the quest for precision, freshness and detail.

Errazuriz 2021 releases

Seña – 98-points

Viñedo Chadwick – 98-points

Don Maximiano Founder’s Reserve – 96-points

Kai – 95-points

An iconic joint venture

In 1991 Eduardo was asked to spend a week showing Robert Mondavi and his wife Margrit the best terroirs and producers in the Aconcagua, Maipo, and Colchagua valleys. This meeting of like-minded visionaries marked the start of a shared quest to produce a world-class wine that could capture the essence of Chile: ‘a Bordeaux blend with a Chilean soul’.

Mondavi and Chadwick signed the joint venture in 1995 and released the first (1995) vintage of Seña – meaning ‘sign’ – two years later.

Tim Mondavi, Robert’s son was in London at the time of the 2024 London tasting, and the vibrant exchange between him and Chadwick provided insight into the project’s inception and philosophy. They said the first priority had been to find the best terroir on a self-contained site, to support the adoption of biodynamic farming practices without any risk of external contamination.

Errázuriz Wine Group took full control of Seña Wines in 2004, following the sale of Robert Mondavi Corporation to Constellation Brands. Chadwick gained control of Mondavi’s share of the business, allowing him to remain custodian of the brand and wine.

Over the years the amount of Cabernet Sauvignon in the Seña blend has decreased in favour of more significant percentages of Carmenère and Malbec which contribute to the wine’s idiosyncrasy and sense of place.

Reinterpreting Carmenère

Kai is the outlier in the Errázuriz-Chadwick flagship portfolio. First released in 2006 with the 2005 vintage, it was created to explore the fine wine potential of Chile’s signature variety, Carmenère.

From vineyards on the gravelly and loamy soils of the third alluvial terrace of the Aconcagua River, the oldest planted in 1993, Kai (which means ‘plant’ in Mapudungun, the language of the indigenous Mapuche people) demonstrates the site’s affinity with the slow-ripening variety.

Kai celebrates Carmenère’s savouriness and elegant rusticity, reinterpreting a once hard-to-ripen variety likely to become more relevant as the climate changes. Different blending companions (Petit Verdot, Syrah and Malbec) help to define the wine’s contour, while adding fleshy depth.

Overall, the tasting showed a clear evolution towards finesse and freshness, a particularly impressive achievement in the face of climate change. The retention of vibrant acidity and moderate alcohol never compromised aromatic complexity or tannic poise.

It will be interesting to see where Muñoz takes these labels as he settles into his new role and the team explores the increasing focus on sustainability and soil research. A similar tasting a decade years from now would be a fascinating exercise.

Errázuriz and Seña: New and old vintages of these flagship Chilean labels

Wines are listed in score order

Related articlesMarch releases on the Place de Bordeaux 2024: Report and top-scoring winesCaballo Loco: Profile of a Chilean icon and 12 wines to tryChile’s Viñedos Familia Chadwick has new technical director