2000 Seña Red
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Tasting notes
77% Cabernet Sauvignon (picked 22 March to 6 April), 17% Merlot (picked 22 March), 6% Carmenère (picked 11 to 15 May). TA 5.08 g/l, pH 3.70, RS 2.1 g/l. Fruit selected from their finest vineyards with an average age of 12 years. Cool growing season which enabled a long ripening period. Hand-picked and destemmed fruit. Stainless-steel fermentation, two pumpovers per day. Three-week maceration. Malolactic fermentation in French oak (92% new). Aged for 18 months in barrel. Bright crimson and still quite deep. Dusty, rich nose. Sweet start – much less refreshing than the 1997. Some rusty nails on the end. Rather screeches to a halt at the end. Fruit seems a bit overripe. (JR)
Critic scores
Jancis Robinson MW
Jancis Robinson MW
More reviews and scores
Brownish crimson. Very light nose. Sweet and pleasant but without that much structure or guts. Becoming a little astringent. Really quite light and chewy. (JR)
The 2000 Sena (77% Cabernet Sauvignon with the balance Merlot and Carmenere) remains purple-colored with a high-class perfume of pain grille, vanilla, black currant, and blueberry. This is followed by a supple, forward wine with soft tannins and a long, pure finish. It can be enjoyed now and over the next 8 years. Sena was originally a joint venture between Robert Mondavi and Eduardo Chadwick. The first vintage was in 1995 and in 1999 the Sena Hillside Vineyard was purchased. Currently, all the grapes going into Sena come from this biodynamically farmed vineyard. It is planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Carmenere, and Cabernet Franc. In a typical vintage Sena is about three-fourths Cabernet Sauvignon although in 2003, Cabernet Sauvignon composed 52% of the blend and Merlot 40%. The wine is aged for 18 months in predominantly new French oak. Importer: Frederick Wildman and Sons, 307 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022, tel. 212-355-0700, www.frederickwildman.com
Looks and smells like Chinese ink. Sweet and ripe with a green vegetal edge. (Chadwick pointed out to me that there's a very narrow window with Carmenère between losing its herbaceous character and letting the acidity fall too low, for the variety is a strange mixture of vegetal and low acidity.) Tea leaf flavours but a little more awkward than the Don Max 2000. (JR)
About the producer
Seña – literally meaning “signal” – was Chile’s first icon wine. In the early 1990s, the country had a reputation mainly for lower-end, high-volume wines, but Eduardo Chadwick, owner and president of Viña Errázuriz, set out to change that.