A Quarter of a Century in Chile: A Vertical Tasting of Seña

BY JOAQUÍN HIDALGO | AUGUST 3, 2022

What were you doing 25 years ago? A quarter of a century is a good chunk of anyone’s life, but time is always a matter of perspective. Whereas for some old-world producers 25 years can go by in the blink of an eye, in South America it represents an eternity. It’s hard to organize a vertical tasting that can adequately tell that story.

But it is not impossible. In Europe, a vertical tasting that spans 25 years might tell the tale of a slowly evolving tradition, but down south it’s more likely to be an account of breakthroughs and landmarks. And that’s what makes it so fascinating.

This summer, while I was compiling my Chile report, I had the opportunity to travel a quarter of a century into the past through a pair of iconic Chilean wines. Interestingly, both were created by the same man: Eduardo Chadwick. I say interestingly because people generally dedicate their lives to one overarching project; Chadwick has two. The vertical of Viñedo Chadwick will be featured in the coming weeks.

The barrel and foudre chamber in which Seña is aged in the heart of the winery Chadwick built for his wines in Panquehue, which neighbors Viña Errázuriz.

A Nod to History 

Let’s start with Seña and slip into the back seat of a car travelling the roads of Chile in 1991. At the wheel is a young Eduardo Chadwick and next to him in the passenger seat is the veteran Robert Mondavi. As circumstance would have it, the Chadwick finds himself taking Mondavi on a tour of the vineyards of Aconcagua, Maipo and Colchagua, to offer an idea of the country’s potential. Or perhaps it had nothing to do with circumstance at all but is rather one of a series of moves calculated to implement a vision of how Chilean wine should be. That would make this trip the culmination of a plan. Either way, Chadwick and Mondavi are getting on well, enjoying the conversation and landscape, and as they move from vineyard to vineyard, they begin to plot an ambitious project: the creation of an iconic Chilean wine. It’s a watershed moment.  

During those years, Mondavi was beginning to see the fruit of his work with Opus One – a joint venture with the Rothschild family – and the dream of making iconic wines in the Americas was really becoming a reality. In the case of Seña, Chadwick was already a partner with substantial pedigree: the heir to Viña Errázuriz, whose family tree features several presidents and titans of business. Chadwick had his feet on the ground but his eyes firmly fixed on the horizon. And so Seña was born; a wine made for the first time in 1995 whose name means “sign” or “brand”. Or landmark.  

To achieve this, Tim Mondavi went to Chile to take the reins of an Errázuriz team that also included another Californian émigré: the young Ed Flaherty, who oversaw oenology. This first Seña offers a good idea of what was to come: grapes chosen from the Errázuriz vineyards, a base of Cabernet Sauvignon and just under a third of Carménère. Both varieties would be present in all the following blends, in different proportions.

The Oenologist Francisco Baettig examining a soil sample from the Seña Vineyard. The angular rocks indicate a colluvial layer. 

In 1998, Mondavi and Chadwick invested in a 42-hectare vineyard, named Ocoa in the Aconcagua Valley, a narrow northeast-facing valley between the Andes and the Chilean Coastal Range. Ocoa is influenced by both mountain climate systems, an ample thermal range from the former and a cool, dry breeze from the latter. Its soils are a mixture of alluvial and colluvial make-ups as well as deposits of volcanic ash. Across these different seams, they planted Cabernet Sauvignon, Carménère, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, while Malbec would follow a decade later. These varieties make up the core of Seña.