Wines of the Year 2025: South America
Regional editor, Ines Salpico, looks back on a year of colourful wines from across South America, including a standout panel tasting and a new icon in the making.
One of my favourite features of 2025, included in our September issue, collected contributions from our South America experts on their favourite ‘hidden jewels’.
Their input – kaleidoscopic and heartfelt – revealed unexpected and lesser-known wines, places and people. It offered colourful snapshots of South America as a source not just of outstanding wines, but also of creative energy and positive entrepreneurial spirit.
These are the drivers behind the continent’s most exciting bottles, many of which remained overlooked and underestimated for a long time. It’s great to see collectors and investors finally catching up with the quality and ageability of South America’s best – represented in this Wines of the Year selection by yet another outstanding vintage of Seña, the 2023.
Meanwhile, I was mind-blown by what is surely another Chilean icon in the making: Piedra Sagrada. But it’s not just in the upper fine wine spheres that South America is making an indelible mark.
Our September issue also included one of Decanter’s most successful panel tastings to date – South American Premium Whites – headlined by idiosyncratic (and accessible) gems such as Carmen’s DO Florillón #6 Semillon.
All of the wines etched in my memory of 2025 tell beautiful stories. From Argentina, Cara Sur’s Parcela La Totora evokes the exciting revival of Criolla varieties, while Catena Zapata’s Birth of Cabernet shows how excellence stems from the careful observation of the role nature plays in chance occurrence.
This is the essence of wine: unique messages, travelling the world in beautiful bottles. At a time when so many of us are feeling like stranded castaways, you’d want to feel inspired by one of these South American missives.
Wines of the year 2025: South America
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Carmen, DO Florillón #6 Semillon, Apalta, Colchagua Valley, Chile
Carmen is one of Chile’s oldest wineries, yet its DO range is now among the country’s most forward-thinking. Its focus is on unique vineyard sites, lesser-known grape varieties and often a more radical approach to winemaking. One of the standout wines in the range is the DO Florillón, a biologically aged Semillon. From vines approaching 70 years of age in the heart of Apalta, this non-vintage wine matures under a thick veil of flor (yeasts) that gives it one of the most distinctive personalities in Chilean wine today. Amanda Barnes MW: Pungent flor, sea salt and camomile. Racy and bone-dry with a long, marcona almond finish. One for anchovies. Florencia Gomez: Nutty flor aroma, appealing saline, dry palate. Layers of dried apricot, almonds and grippy texture. Long and inviting, moreish. Benjamin Gubbins: Umami, wax, flor; really savoury nose and palate. Grass and citrus, with that umami undertone. Very gourmand.
CarmenApalta
Piedra Sagrada, Pirque, Maipo Valley, Chile, 2016
A wine of incredible character and poise that offers an unexpected, superb rendition of Cabernet Sauvignon, truly communicating the uniqueness of the Piedra Sagrada terroir. Incredible elegance and detail, rendeered in the gossamer tannic structure. The latter is coated in a fine layer of salt, creating a beautiful encasement for the red cherry, rasberry, plumn and Marcona almonds at the core. Very long finish, driven by fine yet lively acid, with a delicious, playful twist of Campari and blood orange.
2016
Piedra SagradaPirque
Seña, Seña, Aconcagua Valley, Chile, 2023
This vintage of Seña marks the transition between 'eras' with harvest still under the oversight of Francisco Baettig ahead of the arrival of Emily Faulconer, who then briefly left on maternity leave, with Baettig covering for her. The baton has been successfully passed on and Baettig left a fabulous vintage for Faulconer to start her trajectory at Errazuriz: full of detail and with remarkable purity of flavour. 2023 was a hot vintage in Chile but the Seña site benefited from wide temperature amplitude, allowing the fruit to retain the fine and lively acid that frames the wine from start to finish - and a long finish it is. A mineral nose, with gunpowder and graphite, preludes flavours of ripe wild strawberry, maraschino cherries, plum sorbet and cherry pit. Liquorice, bayleaf and sage, sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg, give nuance and definition. Lingering, spicy touch of spicy wild rocket. Drinking superbly now but with a great life ahead of it.
2023
Seña
Catena Zapata, Birth of Cabernet, Mendoza, Argentina, 2021
<p>Successful, inaugural vintage of a wine that pays tribute to the origin of Cabernet Sauvignon. Here it is blended with 10% of its parent Cabernet Franc, for vivid definition and inviting drinkability. The zesty tannins support the red plum, cherry and blackberry fruit, with a bright undercurrent of blood orange adding fluidity throughout. A spicy lining of cardamom and pink pepper gives further definition and liveliness. Delicious and very characterful. </p>
2021
Catena Zapata
Cara Sur, Parcela La Totora, San Juan, Argentina, 2021
This is the top wine of Sebastián Zuccardi and Pancho Bugallo’s old-vine project in the heights of Barreal, north of Mendoza, where their centenarian vines lie at above 1,500m. A selection of fruit from Criolla Chica vines is vinified gently into this deep pink-coloured red. The fine spine of tannins and nervy acidity with notes of balsamic strawberry, blackcurrant leaf, mountain herbs and rose petals make this the Nebbiolo-equivalent of Criolla Chica. A delight.
2021
Cara Sur
