Bodegas Caro
"Caro"
Mendoza
2018

The producer

Bodegas Caro is a collaboration between Bodegas Barons de Rothschild (Lafite) and the Catena family; the name ‘Caro’ is made up of the first two letters of each of the founding families’ surnames. The estate was founded in 1999 in Mendoza, and the first vintage was produced in 2000. Grapes are sourced from the Catena family’s own vineyards in Mendoza and supplemented with fruit from other top vineyards in the region, especially from old vine Malbec.

The wine

“Caro” is Bodegas Caro’s flagship wine, first produced in 2000, and always consisting of a blend of approximately 60-75% Cabernet Sauvignon, with 25-40% Malbec. Ageing takes place in French oak barrels, of which 50% new, for around 18 months. Caro is a powerful and structured wine, with impressive black fruit concentration, spice and floral complexity, velvety texture, and a long juicy finish. On average 45,000 bottles are produced of each vintage.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.