2000 Los Vascos Colchagua Grande Reserve -- a very dark wine, with dark fruit and smoke bouquet immediately reminiscent of a good young Bordeaux; a bit tight but fairly smooth texture and medium-to-heavy feel in the mouth, there's no shortage of currant, mineral, smoke, and cedarbox flavors, with a medium-length finish that's toughened up by some pretty gritty tannins, though the fruit and smoke outlast the tannins in the end. I guess it's sort of a backward wine, certainly not lacking in concentration. App. 87-9 pts, maybe 1 or 2 more if those tannins mellow out without the fruit dying first. Hard to tell.

What isn't hard to tell is the Lafite-Rothschild connection here. The label design is a clear nod to that famous Chateau, and right below the Los Vascos name the next line reads "Domaines Barons de Rothschild (Lafite)." The back label claims this wine is made entirely from ungrafted, pre-phylloxera Bordeaux rootstock, and is produced under the direct supervision of "the Domaines," which is just ambiguous enough to suggest it might be made under the supervision of the traveling winemakers from Lafite-Rothschild. Whatever, it's a decent wine that seems quite pretentious when you take the bottle into account. This bottle was brought by a guest and isn't one I'm familiar with, but I know the "reserve" of this producer sells for around C$25, so I'm guessing the "Grande reserve" is well over that, which makes it overpriced in my book.