Don Melchor

Profile & Story

Viña Don Melchor is dedicated to the production of the icon Cabernet Sauvignon Don Melchor. The eponymous vineyard that gives life to this wine is located in the renowned appellation of Puente Alto, in the Maipo Valley, at the foot of the Andes Mountains, at 650 meters above sea level, on the third alluvial terrace of the northern bank of the Maipo River. The vineyard currently covers 314 acres (125 hectares) - mainly Cabernet Sauvignon, with small amounts of Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot - and is divided into seven main parcels, further subdivided into 151 micro-parcels. One of the most important qualities of the vineyard is its soil: poor in nutrients and, at the same time, composed of clays, silts, sands, and rounded stones, ensuring good drainage and low fertility, which allows for a restriction in the vegetative growth of the plants, favoring the concentration and natural maturity of the clusters. The vines grown in the Don Melchor vineyard come from a massal selection, a propagation method that ensures genetic diversity from the first pre-phylloxera plants brought from Bordeaux, France, in the 19th century. In 2004, in order to preserve this material, the best 3,000 plants of the vineyard were identified, from which the material for all future renovations of the vineyard is obtained today. Based on its commitment to Excellence, Innovation and Sustainability, this year Viña Don Melchor also revealed its “sundial vineyard” project, which was planted in 2018, and which this year was unveiled to rise as a new path to continue advancing in the field of sustainability, the preservation of biodiversity in the vineyard and how to face the challenges posed by climate change, as well as being a contribution to science and an important source of information regarding the cultivation of the vine.