Casillero del Diablo have been flexing their mass market muscles for some time, sponsoring a premier league football club, putting both Wayne Rooney and the general public through one of the cheesiest adverts since that "Ambassador spoiled us" and rolling out a marketing package the like of which few wine brands can match of which this dinner was the London based event in 2011.The evening included commentary by Marcelo Papa, the dapper Chilean winemaker and Peter Richards, both a Master of Wine (for which read wine trade Jedi) and genuine authority on all things vineous and Chilean. The wine flowed generously all evening and the five course meal was well prepared and of good quality, though with no highlights to comment on for my part.
Casillero y Diablo is Concha y Toro's mid market brand subject to regular and aggressive discounting at all supermarkets and bearing this in mind, it is well made and an excellent example of the benefits that the much derided industrialisation of wine production has bought us.
It is also a fabulous advertisement for the value that Chile can extract from the viticultural process with it's benign climate, low cost labour that makes hand harvesting an option at lower price points, absence of vintage variation and a scale of production that allows well made drinkable everyday wine to be sold at a price that everyone can afford.
So neither a gourmet feast nor a highbrow tasting evening but I don't doubt that a majority of diners staggered off into the night better disposed towards the brand and more likely to buy it in the future.
