Copa Del Rey Chilean 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon - 6 Pack
$49.99 + $5 shipping
CONDITION: Red
PRODUCT: 6 Copa Del Rey Chilean 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
CT link above
It was about time we get to taste chilean quality wines!
I’ve had some inexpensive Chilean Cabs that weren’t bad. Not spectacular, mind you, but good values nonetheless.
I don’t suppose there’s anyone around who has tried this?
“Their blurb says this wine is: “the Cup of the King.” I’m thinking the King of ID, here. It otherwise comes across as drinkable, but just.”
Also, the obvious question: Table wine or no, is this ready to drink?
Chilean Cabs should be good QPR being ubiquitous low-mid end fare on euro supermarkets. This will be of a new world style, like Australian Wines, with ripe dark black flavours. If you like the TLC and similar wines this is likely for you. However, beware that there are many mediocre ones too: hoping these are- being from WD- a cut above the mass market standard in European supermarkets.
High pH and ripe dark flavours: Likely drinking young…
Hi Richard. Have you had many Chilean Cabs? I seem to find them at parties where the host asks “red or white,” and I don’t remember all the labels. Two of the more tolerable for me were Montes (better) and Frontera (tolerable at best). Neither had much acidity; both were young and dark-fruity. The Montes won easily on aroma and finish.
Although I can always use some cheapies, truth be told I don’t think I’ll order owing to the weather forecast. It’s just getting too cold to risk it.
Still, love to hear your opinion.
Nightghost, saw the negative review on that same site too, but given their catch-phrase is ‘we review bad wines so you don’t have to’ I figure maybe they have pre-existing bias? Also an '08 Cab might be a bit young to drink without some time to decant/smooth out?
Here’s the winery website just in case it wasn’t linked above yet.
Also for those comparing to the TLC I will chime in that while my first bottle right after it arrived spring-time last year was ‘meh’ I have since tried more and I would say that more time in the bottle is doing it good. Still a good value, and I would say in general I’ve had some same kind of experience with many of the same type of value-priced Chilean wines. World-stopping? No - but definitely a tasty juice for day to day/good cooking at a good price vs what you would need to spend for a similar offering from many other regions!
My ‘cellar’ is technically over-full at this time but at this price point I may be in for this as well… Would value more input from people who have actually tasted it or the winery themselves to help me decide!
I’m not really a Chilean expert, but the cheapies, like Concha Y Toro is standard charcoalfruit marginally drinkable supermarket mass fodder. Not my style but it’s dependably predictable.
While this should be better, I sense it’s of that ripeness, not like Ty Caton 's smoothness but the densenesss of the Aussies. I hear good Chilean wines really are very good, but have not yet tried a quality one myself…
Also awaiting some real data points / reviews
Seems like high pH and low TA for a cab. And 2008 seems really young. But is it going to be cab-like and drinkable, or as bad as a $9 cab has the potential to be?
I don’t have a whole lot of experience w/ Chilean wines, I’ve had a few. My favorite has been Laura Hartwig. It was at least 5 years back and it was quite great and cheap to boot.
I haven’t really ran across any lately however.
Good question! I can get Concha y Toro Casillero del Diablo for the same price by the bottle, and it is decent wine. There needs to be some added motivation here besides price.
2008 is not too young for a standard, drink-now wine. Also, keep in mind the southern hemisphere runs 6 months ahead of us in terms of harvesting. This is sort of like a 2007.5 in that sense.
Several CT notes seem to mention bell pepper/herbaceousness. Sounds like this could be a good one to train folks on pyrazines. But usually it is not a good sign when a 14.5% ABV wine is very veggie forward. TA is pretty low, too. Though I often like a bit of bell pepper, the low acid, high alc, flabby bell pepper wines end up being a bit weird to me.
I moticed the low acid. So Quite possibly terrible, but then that’s a matter of taste. Certainly not an rpm-style subtle sort or lively red fruit wine. Imho Almost certainly a chocolate cedar ‘spice box’ (wtf) pencil lead special made for drinking young. If you like that, then given it’s a woot it’s probably a tasty example of that style.
Your posts are still by far the most informed and interesting! Thank you again 
This wine is priced at $10.12 at Specs in Houston.
Thanks for the heads up. I might grab a bottle to see if I like this.
[labrat]
Good morning, fellow Wine.Wooters!
I’m going to preface this report with two caveats - one for the wine, and the other for myself. This wine arrived on a 15 degree (and I don’t mean Celsius) morning. It did get nine hours inside to settle down before opening, but it probably had a rough night on that FedEx truck. As for myself, I like what I like, but I’m not particularly fit to give an educated review (I’m learning from you all though, so someday….). That said, I’ll walk you through the evening this bottle and I shared with my beer-snob SO, and hopefully give you enough to decide if you want to give the Copa a go.
I don’t have an aerator, so I poured myself a glass, took a sip, then very resolutely set it down to breathe. Upon opening, the nose was something I could only describe as “old book.” The mouth-feel was heavier and more puckery than I typically would like (would that be tannins?), and while the taste was not offensive, there was no particular standout flavor. Half an hour later, the both the nose and the flavor had softened quite a bit, and “old book” settled into something distinctly leathery. It had quickly upgraded itself from Tolerable to Passable.
At the one hour mark, the SO arrived home with our dinner of choice on nights when we both work late: crusty bread and stinky cheese, specifically Cambozola and a brie. I also got out some rich Spanish olive oil and a bit of the Aux Delices white truffle butter from its last wine.woot offering. The SO’s pre-food assessment was: “Old leather bench. And wood. But not pine. Hardwood. American oak, maybe? No, black walnut.” He’s not an oenophile, but he is a carpenter, so I trust his palate for wood shavings. The verdict was in: this wine is leathery and woody and a bit musty, but not unpleasantly so. There was also a slight hint of vegetable, but neither of us could quite place our finger on which one - maybe carrot or tomato? - it was just a hint.
Enter the food.
This wine loves robust fatty food. A sip between bites brought out the signature note of each of the aforementioned toppings we so lovingly applied to our bread. The foods became softer and richer with the wine, while the wine itself didn’t beg for attention. We were so enthralled with this transformation that we decided to split the last glass over a dessert of caramelly gjetost cheese and chilli-infused chocolate. Again, the wine loved the cheese, although something terrible happened when it hit the chocolate - we assume the chillies are to blame, so I don’t know that I’d serve this with a spicy meal.
Had this been $49.99 for three bottles, I’d be on the fence, but at under $10 a bottle delivered, this will be a worthy companion to my next cheese board. In for one!
I’m trying to post my lab rat report but am running into technical difficulties because I’m posting from work. Let me see if I can figure out a work around…
[labrat]
With many apologies……
(singing) I never thought my life could be
Anything but wine-tastrophe
But suddenly I begin to see
A bit of free woot wine for me
'Cause I’ve got a golden wine woot ticket
I’ve got a golden twinkle in my eye…… (singing ends)
I cannot begin to describe the awesomeness of the moment I checked my e-mail and saw that I had been selected to be a Labrat! Oh my. The giddy heights. The dizzying euphoria. Could it be real? Could it be true? I had to sit down.
Oh. Wait. I was already sitting down. Hmmm….perhaps that acute vertigo isn’t completely gone ….
Bliss. Pure bliss. The frenzied e-mails to my husband, Mr. Spuds. The immediate checking and re-checking of the Fed Ex website. Will the wine be delivered before I leave for the day? What will it be? Red? It has to be a red, right? Oh…the anticipation.
Slowly the full impact begins to dawn on me. Uh oh. I’m actually going to have to drink a bottle of wine I’ve never tried before, take notes, and somehow come up with a Rat report that’s worthy of winewoot. Oh no. I don’t think I can do this. I’m still a young wine drinker. I’m still learning to make friends with red wines without getting migraines. Much biting of the nails ensues. What am I going to do? Why did they pick me? What does “fruit forward” mean? What does “new wolrd” vs “old world” styles mean? How do I learn to taste that in 15 minutes?
Then the full horror sets in. (Gulp) Thursday is sushi night in the Spuds household.
Oh no!!! Maybe it will be a white wine. Maybe it will be something that works with sushi. Maybe. Maybe.
Nervous pacing until the box arrives.
(Melodramatic crescendo music) It’s a 2008 Copa del Rey Cabernet Sauvignon. That’s NOT gonna work with sushi! Much weeping ensues.
When I get home and finally manage to explain to Mr. Spuds that we MUST drink the wine tonight (He was hoping we could enjoy it over the weekend. He had not yet been trained in the ways of the Rat.), my nervousness is at a fever pitch. Will I even be able to open the bottle?
Phew. The bottle opens easily. We immediately poured a little bit into a glass and started the whole gaze, swirl, sniff, sip, rinse, repeat process.
Hmmm….visually it looks like Welch’s grape juice. That’s typically not my first thought about wine. Okay. Moving on. Maybe there’s just too little in the glass to give a sense of the full color.
Sniffing ensues. (My palate doesn’t have a large vocabulary so Mr. Spuds had to help. And the words we use may be the same words that “wine people” use but may mean something different. So I’ll try to offer extended explanations when possible.) Fruity. That’s what I got. I smelled fruit. Mr. Spuds took a try. Cherry jello. Evidently I’m easily suggestible because with that thought in my head I picked up notes of cherry as well.
After the first sip we had two words to describe the wine. Dry and smooth. Now our use of “dry” and “smooth” are probably NOTHING like how any knowledgeable person on winewoot would use them. So here’s what we think when we use those words.
Dry- It left my mouth completely dry. Seriously. As I sipped with wine all moisture left my tongue, the roof of my mouth, everywhere. My mouth was left totally dry. So I’m not sure what real wine-terms should be used to describe that, but we used the word “dry.”
Smooth- It didn’t seem to have the warm-you-all-the-way-down-to-you-toes feel that reds sometimes have for us. It went down smooth. And since I like the warming sensation, that was a little disappointing.
Our first impression was that it was an okay wine. And we were curious to know how it would taste after decanting.
We decanted it and let it breathe for 2 hours.
When we came back it didn’t seem as “dry.” There was still some moisture left on my tongue. And it didn’t seem to hang around very long. It didn’t linger on the palate for any real length of time. (Does that mean it had a short finish?)
Overall we thought it was drinkable. Nothing really exciting, but it was drinkable. (But please, for the love of everything good and holy, don’t drink it WITH sushi!)
In keeping with the Willy Wonka theme, Mr. Spuds said if it had to relate it to a Willy Wonka character he would call this wine Mike TeeVee. It wasn’t very complex like Willy Wonka. It wasn’t full bodied like Gustav. It wasn’t self-centered like Veruka. (Okay….that’s a stretch!) It was just a basic, simple wine. A Mike TeeVee if you will.
So there it is. My first Rat report. Was it okay? Could somebody pass me a glass of that Shnozberry Vino now?
Any red wine that has Chilean in the name is an instant no for me… I have come to the conclusion that Chilean wines and me are not a good match.