Don Melchor

Don Melchor is a Chilean premium wine brand composed of the singular eponymous Cabernet Sauvignon. It is owned by Concha y Toro, one of the largest wine producers in South America, and named after Melchor de Concha y Toro, a Chilean businessman who brought Bordeaux varieties to Chile and planted them in the Maipo river valley in the 1880s. He also founded the Concha y Toro winery.

All the fruit for Don Melchor comes from a 127-hectare (315-acre) vineyard in the Puente Alto DO. The vineyard is situated at 2100ft (640m) above sea level on the north bank of the Maipo River at the foot of the Andes Mountains. It is planted roughly with 90 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 7 percent Cabernet Franc, with the remainder made up of Merlot and Petit Verdot. The vineyard was first planted in 1890 with pre-phylloxera Bordeaux rootstock and all the vines growing today are massal selections of those original plants.

The Don Melchor wine itself wasn't made until the 1980s. It came about at a time when Chile was expanding its wine industry into the international market, and was beginning to make fine wines. 1987 marked the inaugural vintage of the Don Melchor label and has since become consistently critically lauded, and is perhaps the best known wine of Concha y Toro. The 1988 vintage was the first Chilean wine to be included on Wine Spectator's annual Top 100 Wines list in 1992 and since then it has appeared again every few vintages – including several times in the Top 10.