Carménère

Carmenère is a Bordeaux grape, a crossing of cabernet franc and gros cabernet, that was widely planted in the Médoc before phylloxera. It grafted poorly onto American rootstock and was effectively abandoned in France. In Chile, where cuttings had been taken before the outbreak and where phylloxera never arrived, it survived in the vineyards, mixed in among the merlot and sold as merlot for over a century.

In 1994 an ampelographer from Montpellier identified it, and DNA work confirmed the finding. Roughly half of what Chile was selling as merlot turned out to be carmenère, which explained a long-standing complaint that Chilean merlot tasted herbaceous.

It ripens very late, three to four weeks after merlot, and that is the whole difficulty. Underripe, it is dominated by pyrazines and tastes of green pepper, tomato leaf and asparagus. Fully ripe, it is dark, soft, low in acid, and gives blackberry, soy, black pepper and a savoury, smoky depth. Chile's warmer inland valleys, Colchagua, Cachapoal and Maipo, grow the best. Small plantings exist in northern Italy, where it was also long mistaken for cabernet franc.