Malcolm Jolley talks to Aurelio Montes Jr. about Purple Angel 2017 and more…
When I last talked to Aurelio Montes Jr. at the Montes winery it was the end of April and he was relieved to have got his harvest in just as the COVID-19 crisis was beginning to hit Chile hard. The wine in the Ontario market that we discussed was the 2017 Montes Alpha Carmenère, from a particularly good vintage, he explained. A little more than six months later and Montes was in a very good mood when I reached out back to him recently on Zoom. The occasion was the release, this weekend, at select LCBO Vintages stores, of the 2017 Montes Purple Angel ($69.96 | LCBO# 62364), one of the wineries ‘Icon’ wines and highest expression of Carmenère the family makes. We tasted and talked about the 2017 Purple Angel in the video below, and we also discussed the original wine that began the Montes wine story, the 2018 Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon ($19.95 | LCBO# 322586), which is the current year for this widely available Vintages Essential wine.
The video below is long by internet standards, running just over 25 minutes. It’s organized in this way: we begin by briefly discussing how Chile is doing during the pandemic and how things are in the winery now, then we taste and get into detail on the Purple Angel and then the Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon, and finish by talking about the 2020 vintage from April and the prospects for the 2021 already on its way in the Chilean springtime. My suggestion is to get a hold of the two wines and sip and taste along – you could always break it up into two viewings.
Email versions of this post won’t display video. Click here to see the video at GFR.
