Carmenère: Chile's Lost Bordeaux Grape

Carmenère is the grape France lost and Chile grew for a hundred years without knowing what it had. It left Bordeaux after phylloxera, crossed the Atlantic, and hid in Chilean vineyards under the name Merlot until a French scientist looked closely in 1994. If you drink Merlot for its softness but want something with more to say, this is the bottle to reach for, and it usually costs less.

What it tastes like

Think plush and medium-bodied. Dark plum, blackberry, a little black cherry, with tannins that stay soft rather than gripping. What sets it apart is the savory side: a green streak that can read as bell pepper, tomato leaf, or dried herbs, coming from natural compounds called pyrazines. Picked too early, that note turns sharp and stalky. Picked ripe, it settles into the background as a savory lift, often with cocoa or coffee alongside the fruit.

That herbal edge is the whole point. It gives Carmenère a backbone of interest that a lot of easy-drinking reds lack. You get the comfort of a round, fruit-forward wine and a second, more serious layer underneath.

A grape that survived by being mistaken for another

Carmenère started in Bordeaux, one of the six red grapes that once made up the classic blend. It was never easy there: late to ripen, prone to poor fruit set, and demanding on the grower. When the phylloxera louse tore through European vineyards after 1867, Carmenère was hit hard and mostly abandoned. France moved on.

But cuttings had already reached Chile in the mid-1800s, planted alongside Merlot and sold as Merlot for generations. Chile's dry, isolated climate kept phylloxera out, so the vines simply kept growing. The confusion held until 1994, when the ampelographer Jean-Michel Boursiquot examined vines in the Central Valley and realized a large share of what Chile called Merlot was in fact the lost Bordeaux grape. A century of mistaken identity, corrected in an afternoon of looking closely.

Chile has since made Carmenère its signature red, with the warm Peumo area of the Cachapoal Valley and the wider Colchagua region giving the ripest, most complete versions.

Bottles to look for

A few names are worth knowing. De Martino bottled the first wine labeled as varietal Carmenère in 1996, so they have a real claim to the modern story. Concha y Toro's Marqués de Casa Concha Carmenère is a widely available benchmark at a mid-range price. Montes, Errázuriz, and Santa Rita all make reliable examples across price tiers, from everyday bottles to more ambitious single-vineyard wines. When you shop, look for fruit from Peumo, Cachapoal, or Colchagua, and lean toward warmer recent vintages where the grape ripens fully.

Rooting for a grape that spent a hundred years mislabeled is the easiest kind of underdog case to make. It was written off in its homeland and only survived because nobody in Chile knew to stop growing it. Here is my honest limit, though: I haven't put a scored review on it yet, so you won't find a number at the top of this page. That lands once I've worked through a few side by side rather than trusting a single bottle. The tasting shape above reflects the grape's well-documented profile, not one lucky pour.

Where to buy

Disclosure: some links here are affiliate links — if you buy through them I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Learn more

Carmenère is one of the more available underdog reds in the US, precisely because Chile made it a flagship. You will find bottles across price points at most retailers that carry Chilean wine, and the value is real at the lower end. Start your search here and work up from the everyday bottles: browse Carmenère on Wine.com →.

— Chris Berry

If you're switching from a famous grape

If Merlot is your default, Carmenère is the switch that costs you nothing and gives you more. You keep the soft tannins and the dark, rounded fruit, and you gain that savory herbal edge plus a better price. For the full case and more alternatives, see Wines Like Merlot and Order This Instead.

Part of Lesser-Known Wines: 17 Obscure Grapes Worth Switching To — the full underdog-swap guide.