Seña
Vina Seña
Aconcagua Valley
2018

The producer

Seña is a joint venture between Eduardo Chadwick (proprietors of Errazuriz) and Robert Mondavi and established in the late 1990, with the aim to make Chile’s finest red wine. 42 hectares of land in Aconcagua was planted with mainly Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenere, and smaller portions of Malbec, Petit Verdot, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc.

The vineyard is biodynamically farmed, and soils are rich in loam, with a clay-loam structure with gravel and volcanic rocks. The 2001 vintage of Seña achieved a second place at the 2004 Berlin tasting. Since 2005, Sena is owned entirely by the Chadwick family.

The wine

1995 was the first vintage of Seña and released in 1997. The blend varies with the vintage but is usually dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon with smaller parts of Malbec, Carmenere, and Cabernet Franc. Seña matures for 22 months in 80% new French oak and is a dense and powerful wine, with ripe firm tannins, and great complexity.

 2018 Seña Release from Seña Winery

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.