2021 El Enemigo Cabernet Franc Gran Enemigo Gualtallary 750 ml

Some of the world’s greatest wines are built on Cabernet Franc. On Bordeaux’s Right Bank, the grape stars in $500+ bottlings from Château Cheval Blanc and Château Ausone. In Napa Valley, it forms the backbone of icon Dalla Valle’s Maya—another $500+ icon.  

With a near-perfect 99 points from the tough-grading Wine Advocate, El Enemigo’s 2021 Gran Enemigo Cabernet Franc stands with and above these legendary wines. Wine Advocate’s Matthew Luczy lauded it as a wine of “incomparable finesse, depth and complexity.” Crafted by iconic winemaker Alejandro Vigil, it’s a world-class bottle that every wine lover should experience. 

Alejandro Vigil stands out among an increasingly competitive Argentine wine community because of his relentless drive and fanatical attention to detail. There’s seemingly no labor he won’t undertake in pursuit of quality. No wonder he earned the first 100-point score from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate for a South American wine. 

There is a revealing anecdote in a Wine Spectator Q&A with Vigil. In that exchange, Vigil tells a story about accompanying a few fellow Argentine winemakers in 2003 on a visit to a barrel maker, who tells the group they can grab any bottle they want from the cellar. Given Argentina’s Malbec-focused kinship with Bordeaux, most of the group headed for the Cheval Blanc, Lafite, and Pétrus. But Vigil and a friend sniff out a bottle of 1984 La Tâche. After the rest of the team expresses little interest in it, they sneak out to the porch to finish the stunning DRC relic.

Vigil’s love for Burgundy comes across in the sleek, soulful, refined nature of his wines. Gran Enemigo is the Enemigo winery’s flagship series, and it centers on four single-site Cabernet Francs. The Gualtallary bottling, dosed with 15% Malbec, hails from a densely planted (10,000 vines per acre) site that sits nearly a mile above sea level (4,822 feet). The vines struggle mightily in rocky, calcareous soils.

The wine, after a four-day maceration, 40-day infusion on 40% whole clusters, ages for 15 months in concrete. The result is one of Argentina’s finest wines—only two scored higher in ‘21—and one of the most stunning Cabernet Francs on the planet.