Under the Radar

Thursday, 10 November 2011 17:49 Cecile G. Mauricio / Fermentations

There's a newcomer on the already well-chosen portfolio of Brumms Quality Wines. Known for her line of premium German and Austrian labels, Brumms owner Kitt Shroeder has slowly been adding wines from noted producers in South America. After listing the mighty Malbecs of prestigious Argentine winery Achaval Ferrer, she now carries the wines of El Principal, a small obscure Chilean winery. Those wines she introduced at a small wine dinner she and her husband Klaus recently hosted at their restaurant Lemuria.

Auqui, a vibrant, utterly elegant Sauvignon Blanc would be the only white wine for the evening, Ms. Schroeder explained, our glasses momentarily forgotten as she toured us around her compact, temperature-controlled cellar just below the restaurant. For the newcomer to Lemuria, the first glimpse of the restaurant is  a pleasant jolt. It sits at the far end of a wide, tiled courtyard framed by lush greenery. It is easy to miss that courtyard (and the restaurant)—set as it is in a slight hollow off the side of a narrow, winding street. If not for the parking attendant’s guidance, I would’ve ended up on the front door of the owner’s residence—the restaurant, after all, is much like an extension of the Schroeder couple’s house, born of their passion for wine and the good food that must accompany it.

How did you find the wines of El Principal? La Principessa, the amazing entry level Cabernet Sauvignon-Carmenère blend, was now making the rounds with the gutsy tomato soup dressed with sautéed seafood. Turns out that the wines found Ms. Schroeder instead, through the winery’s representative in the Philippines—Cliff Davies, president of Döhle Philippines, the German shipping company whose principal in turn owns El Principal in Chile.

Despite its present German ownership, El Principal has vestiges of its French esprit, a throwback to its earlier history in 1988 when it was founded as partnership between Jorge Fontaine, owner of Hacienda El Principal, and Jean-Paul Vallette, former owner of Château Pavie, the famed St-Emilion grand cru. When Jean-Paul passed away before the 1999 harvest, his winemaker son Patrick took over and the first El Principal wines were born. Years later, Joechen Doehle, the German owner of Doehle Latinamerica Logistics, bought the winery from the Vallette family and a new team under winemaker Gonzalo Guzmán and oenologist Patrick Léon (former chief winemaker for Chåteau Mouton Rothschild) supervised the project beginning with the 2006 vintage. Still, the goal was the same—to craft the finest red wines in the tradition of Bordeaux, in this easternmost corner of Alto Maipo in the Andean foothills east of Pirque.

Like the softly rich La Principessa 2010, the El Principal reds—Calicanto 2010, Memorias 2006, El Principal 2006—are Cabernet Sauvignon-Carmenère blends, each one progressively more intense, more layered and complex. The wines all have that vibrant freshness and that wonderful tension between fruit and tannin, power and elegance, reflecting not just judicious winemaking but also the unique characteristics of the grapes grown in the El Principal vineyards. With their accessible price points and superb quality, how long can these wines stay under the radar? Already, around our dinner table, there was talk of organizing a future vertical tasting of the opulent, single-vineyard, El Principal. Not to forget too, that excellence can never be hidden.