November 19, 2024
100-Pointed Sena 2018 at a sharp price
The reputation, scores, and prices of Sena have been steadily rising year after year. We're thrilled to offer a competitively priced parcel of the highly acclaimed 2018 vintage, which holds the highest scores from both the Wine Advocate and James Suckling. Remarkably, with our special pricing, it also represents the lowest-priced of the 5 most recent vintages. Don't miss the opportunity to add this exceptional wine to your collection.
We encourage you to take a look at the comparison table we've provided below.
Sena is a benchmark Chilean wine that encapsulates the unique expression of the Aconcagua Valley's terroir. A collaboration between Eduardo Chadwick and Robert Mondavi, Sena represents a fusion of Old and New World winemaking traditions. The 2018 vintage, widely celebrated, is a masterful blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Carmenere, and Petit Verdot, showcasing balance, elegance, and complexity.
The 2018 vintage benefitted from a cooler growing season, allowing for slow, even ripening. The result is a wine with exceptional aromatic clarity and structural finesse. Layers of blackcurrant, plum, and blueberry intertwine with notes of tobacco, cedar, and delicate spices. The tannins are refined and polished, supporting a vibrant acidity that promises excellent ageing potential.
On the palate, Sena 2018 is both rich and poised, offering remarkable depth and harmony. Its long, mineral-driven finish reflects the granitic soils of the region, lending a distinct sense of place. James Suckling scored the wine the perfect 100-Point rating making this one of the must have vintages of Sena. The Wien Advocate was a couple of points behind with 98 points. The wine is now in its dirnkign window of 2021-2035 (WA) so you have a good decade to enjoy these bottles but can open one straight away as it’s a back vintage!
With a very sharp special offer price, this is a wine you will want as part of your collection.
Comparison of the five most recent vintages of Sena:
Sena 2018
100 Points | James Suckling
This is a very thoughtful Seña that shows unique aromas of warm earth, mushrooms and conifer, turning to dark berries and black olives. The palate is more glamorous with ultra-fine tannins that envelop your palate. Shows power and vibrancy at the end. Toned muscles. It’s a very intellectual wine that harkens back to the 2015. Blend of 55% cabernet sauvignon, 18% malbec, 15% carmenere, 7% cabernet franc and 5% merlot.
98 Points | Wine Advocate, Luis Gutiérrez
The 2018 Seña shows the fresher side of the Ocoa zone of the Aconcagua Valley through a Bordeaux blend of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Malbec, 15% Carmenere, 7% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot; there are small differences, but nothing substantial. As I've seen in other wines from the very complete 2018 vintage, the grapes ripened thoroughly and achieved more flavors and nuances, and the wines are slightly higher in alcohol (14% this year versus 13.3% in 2017, but in reality it's 13.8% ). But the wine seems to have more of everything. The grapes fermented in a combination of stainless steel and concrete vats and matured in new barriques and Stockinger foudres for 22 months, a similar formula as the one used for Viñedo Chadwick. This is a very elegant vintage of Seña, a year with a slow ripening so that the grapes achieved very good ripeness and full development of aromas and flavors, making the wine nuanced and complex, with depth but also freshness and finesse—floral and expressive. The tannins are very fine, polished and elegant, and the wine is long and complex, mixing the best f 2015 and 2016, coming through as a very complete year. It's still a little young and should develop nicely in bottle; it's approachable now, but if you can hold it a little bit more, it should be even better. This has to be the finest vintage of Seña to date. Comparing it with the Chadwick from the same year, there is more freshness and a little more complexity and clout coming form the cooler zone and the palette of varieties used that give more options to achieve more nuance. 100,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in February and March 2020.
98 points | Tim Atkin MW
Average growing season temperatures at Seña were significantly lower in 2018 than in 2017 and that, coupled with a subtle Pacific Ocean influence, has delivered a fresher style. For all that, it remains the most exotic and “Mediterranean” of the top Errázuriz reds, with more colour than its partners and top notes of rosemary and lavender. The palate is still quite firm, with sinewy tannins, toasty, cigar-box oak and good depth and structure. Marrying Cabernet Sauvignon with 45% Malbec, Carmenère, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, with ageing in 85% new wood, it’s youthful, assertive and slightly inchoate, hinting enticingly at more to come in bottle as the oak integrates into the wine 2024-32