Los Vascos Cabernet Sauvignon

Wine: Los Vascos Cabernet Sauvignon.

Grape: cabernet sauvignon

Region: Colchagua Valley, Chile

Vintage: 2009

Price: $7.99

In the glass: Los Vascos Cabernet Sauvignon is a deep semi-opaque purplish-red color with a dense core going out into a fine crimson rim definition with medium-high painted viscosity.

On the nose: There is serious concentration emanating from the glass with ripe crushed black fruit dominated by creme de cassis, black cherries, loganberries and soft sweet currants, followed by jammy licorice-laced plums, phenolic compounds, oak references, spices, tobacco leaf and earth-driven minerals.

On the palate: This wine is a big mouthful of spiced black currant juice, very true to the Chilean cabernet structure within, and then layered soft blackberries, wild cherries and elderberry fruit, leading into a seamless midpalate that is just ripe with black fruit and hints of mint and black tea. This well-made wine is big and heady with a full-bodied character, yet so supple and fine in the tannin structure, giving it a very smooth, long finish that lingers on with black currant pastilles and tobacco.

Odds and ends: Los Vascos Cabernet Sauvignon is produced in one of Chile's oldest wine estates by one of the foremost families in the wine world: the Rothschilds. With a pedigree like this, one would expect to pay a farm for a bottle, but in reality it is one of the best values on the market. The Los Vascos estate is in the Cañeten Valley, which features a microclimate that offers an almost Bordeauxlike quality. The estate is large enough to produce ample quantities of wine for export as well as the domestic market. The winery uses all French oak barrels for the vinification, and that is undoubtedly part of its elegance and finesse. This is your go-to wine for a great piece of grilled meat, preferably a rib-eye steak. It is young at the moment and should offer fabulous drinking quality for at least a decade.

Gil Lempert-Schwarz's wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.