Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 – Not Sure What All The Fuss Is About

A nice Cabernet from Chile, but is it worth the price?
$14.99 at Costco, available widely.

From the bottle:

Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon – Colchagua Valley
From Chile with Pride

Montes Alpha has become, in the past fifteen years, a benchmark for other Chilean wineries to follow, always in search for Chile’s full potential. Having chosen the most difficult niche to focus on (hotels, restaurants, wine-merchants, delicatessen), we have constantly created beautifully complex but really friendly wines that, once tasted, generate solid loyalty from our beloved followers. To them, our gratitude.

Aurelio Montes has pioneered in premium and ultra-premium wines, in discovering new wine regions like the superb Apalta valley and Marchique (both in Colchagua), in establishing low-yield steep mountain vineyards and, in doing so, has gained wide international recognition. Wine Spectator said it briefly: “Montes offers perhaps the broadest range of quality wine in Chile today”.

Nourished with T.L.C. (Tender Loving Care) all our vines and wines are the result of personal dedication, a great Team and a little help from our Angels.

14.5% Alcohol

The 2008 Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon is a nice, smooth, drinkable wine. There’s plum, ripe fruit, and a little earthiness on the nose. In the mouth nice tannins complement the smoothness . We found it a tad bitter on the finish, however. Overall, a relatively simple wine that is really quite easy to drink but not anything fantastic. There are a number of users on Cellartracker who believe this wine is still too young, which may be the case, but we can only rate it as it stands now.

So that leaves us with a wine that is pretty good, but pretty good doesn’t quite cut it at $15 based on the Reverse Wine Snob Rating System. It gets a Taste rating of 7, higher than some wines on the Buy listbut with a cost 2-3 times that of those wines, it ends up with a lower overall rating. In other words, good, but not quite good enough to justify the price. (And if money is no object, you can always filter the Interactive Wine Rating Chart using the handy dropdowns based purely on the Taste ratings!)

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See a listing of local retailers selling this wine here.

All ratings use a simple 10 point scale with 10 being the best. Find out more about my rating systemhere and check out the Interactive Wine Ranking to find all my reviews! You can sort by type of wine, cost, rating, etc. in the interactive spreadsheet.