Viña Seña

Seña 2015, First Chilean Wine to Offer Authentication

The iconic wine Seña will be the first in Chile to provide consumers with a security and authentication seal on its bottles called Prooftag Bubble Seal™, in order to prevent counterfeiting or fraud, starting with its historical 2015 vintage. This measure will assure wine-lovers that each one of its bottles is authentic and carries its complete guarantee of high quality and excellence.

Guided by intuition and backed by family heritage, Eduardo Chadwick and Robert Mondavi handcrafted a wine of distinctive quality and character. Seña is the culmination of their wonderful parternship and a passionate journey.

An iconic decision is made from the heart. Following the sign of his intuition, in 1995 Eduardo Chadwick pioneered a joint venture with Robert Mondavi to handcraft a world-class Chilean wine. Chadwick searched alongside Mondavi for four long years before finding the ideal terroir in Chile’s Valle de Aconcagua that spoke to their instincts. Seña is the culmination of their vision – an expression of consummate quality and character.

Chadwick and Mondavi searched for four long years before finding the ideal Chilean terroir in Valle de Aconcagua. There, they acquired 350 hectares of virgin hillside land.

Located in the Aconcagua Valley, 40 kilometres from the Pacific Ocean, Seña’s 42-hectare hillside vineyard was planted in 1999 to key red Bordeaux varieties. The colluvial soils on the valley’s slopes present a variety of textures and proportions of stone content, resulting in a great diversity of well-drained gravel and rocky soils with loam to clay-loam texture. The climate is Mediterranean, with a long dry season and rainfall concentrated in winter. Due to its proximity to the Pacific Ocean, the median temperatures are low, however, the vineyard’s position on the eastern side of the Coastal Mountains, facing away from the sea, protects the vines from the direct effect of the ocean’s strong, cold winds and creates cool-climate conditions, perfect for producing red grapes that reach an excellent level of maturity with balanced acidity that provide great elegance and finesse.

Motivated by our sustainable philosophy and even more importantly, by our desire to transcend time through a wine that has a unique personality, we adopted biodynamic agriculture more than seven years ago with the objective of reflecting a deep and authentic sense of origin.

BIODYNAMICS: THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF SELF-REGULATED ECO-SYSTEM.

As pioneers in Chile and around the world, we have learned to make wines that show their place of origin through the use of biodynamic agriculture. Convinced that soil nutrition is vital, we transform organic wastes from the vineyard and from animal manure on the property into compost, which we call the “source of life.” 

We then use it to fertilize the soil and help the plants’ roots capture the nutrients from the ground and the grapes to deliver that essence to the wine.

To maximize quality, the fruit is handpicked exclusively in the morning and brought to the winery in 12 kg boxes. The grapes are then carefully selected on sorting tables and all extraneous plant material, leaves, and stems are removed to ensure fine fruit character in the final blend. The grapes are mostly fermented in stainless steel tanks at temperatures ranging from 24° to 30°C (75°–86°F), depending on the variety and seasonal conditions (microbiological load, and alcohol potential), to achieve the desired level of extraction. 6% of the must are fermented in first-use French oak barrels to increase the complexity of the blend. During fermentation, 3 pump overs are performed daily at 0.5 to 1.5 times the tank volume, in accordance with the degree of extraction desired. 

Total maceration time range from 20 to 33 days for Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Carmenere and 6 to 8 days for Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, depending on the development of each individual lot. 

The new wine then racked to 100% French new oak barrels from a selection of the finest cooperages is aged for 22 months, during which time most of the malolactic fermentation takes place.

The Chilean Wine industry and Viña Seña will remember January 23rd, 2004, as the day of the ‘Berlin Tasting’. Thirty-six of Europe’s most highly regarded wine journalists, writers and buyers met in Berlin to blind taste sixteen wines - six Chilean, six French and four Italian - from the 2000 and 2001 vintages. Divided by country and vintage, there were three Chilean 2001 wines; three French 2001 wines; four Italian 2000 wines and three apiece from Chile and France from the 2000 vintage.

In an historic decision, established French classics such as Château Lafite, Château Margaux, Château Latour, and Italian cult wines Tignanello, Sassicaia, Solaia and Guado al Tasso were placed by judges a distance behind the two winning wines, both from Chile.

Viñedo Chadwick 2000 from Viña Errázuriz’s was placed first ahead of Seña 2001 and in third place came Château Lafite 2000.

CHIEF WINEMAKER · FRANCISCO BAETTIG

Born in 1969 in Santiago, Francisco joined Viña Seña as Chief Winemaker in 2003. He is an Agronomist Engineer from the University of Chile and obtained a Master’s Degree from the Faculty of Oenology at the University of Bordeaux (Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieurs Spécialisées), through a scholarship awarded by the French government.
Throughout his career Francisco has participated in vintages in France in Languedoc-Roussillon as flying winemaker for Michel Laroche, in Pomerol at Le Bon Pasteur, one of the renowned Michel Rolland’s wineries, and in Sancerre at Chateau de Sancerre, reputed for its white wines. He has also worked in the United States at Hallcrest Winery one of the first organically certified wineries in California also in Argentina for a year and has been on numerous technical visits in New Zealand, France, Italy, Australia, Argentina and United States. In Chile he worked for 4 years as an Assistant Winemaker for Casa Lapostolle before joining Viña Errázuriz.
In recognition of his professional trajectory and the great wines he has crafted, Francisco was awarded the distinction of 2011 Winemaker of the Year, by the Chilean Guild of Food & Wine Writers.
Francisco speaks perfect English and French and his love of airplanes moved him to acquire his pilot license for single-motor planes in 1998.