Concha y Toro is proof that scale and seriousness need not be enemies in wine. Latin America's largest producer ships to more than 130 countries, yet the company behind a bottle you can find in almost any supermarket also makes a wine many critics treat as Chile's benchmark.
The supermarket bottle carries the company's founding myth. Don Melchor de Concha y Toro, who planted Bordeaux cuttings in the Maipo Valley in 1883, is said to have spread a rumour that the devil lived in his cellar to keep thieves away from his finest barrels. The brand born from that story, Casillero del Diablo — the devil's cellar — grew into one of the most recognised names in everyday wine.
Maipo Valley
Among those original Bordeaux cuttings was Carménère, a grape that all but disappeared in France and which Chile grew for more than a century in the belief that it was Merlot, until ampelographers told the two apart in the 1990s. Concha y Toro now treats Carménère as a signature, planting it widely alongside the Cabernet Sauvignon that remains its commercial spine.
Ambition at the top of the range came later. Don Melchor, the icon Cabernet named for the founder, arrived in 1987 and was built to be cellared and measured against Bordeaux rather than to undercut it on price. That is the company's real trick: the volume at the bottom pays for the credibility at the top, and a folk tale about a devil ended up bankrolling one of South America's most respected reds.