Concha y Toro Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon Puente Alto 2021

Don Melchor is the flagship bottling from Concha y Toro – the winery that put Chile on the international wine map – and it's long been considered one of the country's most acclaimed wines. The 2021 is arguably its finest hour yet – even earning the #1 spot on Wine Spectator’s best list of 2024 – and we've got it for an unbelievable price, with free shipping on a single bottle. We’ll just put it this way… when a $130 Cab is out-dueling Napa and Bordeaux, you order it. 

Every year, Wine Spectator ranks the top 100 wines in the WORLD, and for 2024, the wine that took the #1 crown was… a Chilean Cabernet that only costs you $129.95. Not a $700 Napa cult wine, not a First Growth Bordeaux – Don Melchor 2021, which Wine Spectator scored 96 points and planted firmly at the top of their annual ranking. And it's not just them… James Suckling gave it 99 points, and Jeb Dunnuck and Vinous landed at 97. It's genuinely hard to find a critic who didn't fall head over heels for it.

Here's the backstory that makes this thing so epic. Enrique Tirado has been the winemaker since 1997, and he's one of the most respected figures in Chilean wine – basically the guy who knows the Puente Alto vineyard better than anyone alive. He also keeps one foot in France, running blending sessions with Bordeaux legend Eric Boissenot, so you get a wine with a distinctly Chilean soul with a Bordeaux-inspired frame. This is the 35th vintage of the wine, and they're not messing around! The grapes come from a massal selection of pre-phylloxera vines, 80% grown on their own roots to protect the vineyard's original genetic material.

So what's actually in the glass? The 2021 is 93% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Cabernet Franc, and 3% Merlot, grown at 650 meters up in the Alto Maipo Valley at the foot of the Andes, then aged 15 months in French oak (68% new, 32% second-use). Suckling's note nails it – sultry graphite, cassis, iron, blackberries, a smidge of cigar box, chocolate, and loads of violets – rich and intense with fine, prominent yet smooth tannins and a long finish. The kicker for anyone thinking about their cellar is that it's drinkable right now, but it'll hold and improve for the next 20 years. A #1-in-the-world wine for $70 under retail, with free shipping on a single bottle. If you know, you KNOW.

FOOD PAIRINGS: This is a structured, high-concentration Cab that wants a little protein and fat to soften into. A well-marbled ribeye, straight up with salt and pepper, is the layup here – the fat rounds out those fine tannins and lets the big fruit notes do their thing.