Photo by Ian McCausland gary’ s corner
By Gary Hewitt, Sommelier( ISG, CMS), CWE
CHILE: PUSHING BOUNDARIES Chilean wines are cheap and cheerful, but why? Vineyard properties are enormous, sprawling across wide, fertile, flat valley floors. Broadly spaced vines are trained for cheap mechanical harvesting, yields are high, and Chile’ s ideal viticultural climate keeps pest and disease pressure low. Predictable, good quality, and, importantly, good value wines have paved the way to success in international markets. Good old Chile.
But success has bred confidence, ambition, and desire to excel— brace yourself for the good new Chile.
A new generation of internationally-trained viticulturalists and enologists are pushing boundaries in Chile’ s wine industry. They know what works in other parts of the world and want to apply new approaches at home. An old adage states that the best wines grow on hillsides, up off the valley floors. The truth is that hillside vineyards have superior airflow, drainage, and light exposure, and, if altitude becomes a factor, may be cooler than the valley floor. In regions all over the country, Chilean producers are pushing up the hillsides with maturing vineyards that are yielding fruit with greater complexity and perfume. A perfect example is the Apalta sub-region of the Colchagua Valley, an elongated amphitheatre of beautiful slopes covered with moderate-density vineyards. Here, the pioneering efforts of producers such as Viña Montes have garnered international acclaim for their wines of great concentration, purity, and finesse.
Other pioneers are pushing the climatic boundaries by exploring regions further north( Elqui and Limari Valleys), south( Bio Bio), and closer to the cooling effects of the Pacific Ocean. A cooler growing season prolongs ripening and heightens grape character, but it is a razor’ s edge: too cool and the grapes will not ripen and green, vegetal traits mar the wines. A great example of life on the edge is Viña Casa Marin, the closest vineyard to the Pacific Ocean in Chile. Labeled“ crazy” by the wine establishment, in 2000, winemaker and entrepreneur Maria Luz Marín established vineyards only 4 kilometres from the ocean in the San Antonio region, southwest of Santiago. The sheer concentration and extravagance of her wines have convinced others, such as Matetic Vineyards, to venture into this new terroir with similar great success. And now, further north, Viña Errazuriz is pioneering a new appellation called Aconcagua Costa for promising new Sauvingnon Blanc and Chardonnay wines from vines breathing fresh sea air.
Modern technology is also being brought to the fore. For example, consider the recent micro-terroir experiments carried out at Viña Casa Silva, where a comprehensive study correlated a vast number of climatic, viticultural, and soil factors to wine quality for five different grape varieties. Meteorological, agricultural, and satellite methodologies helped characterize vineyards down to the 0.1 hectare scale. Now, similar sectors within a vineyard— rather than the whole vineyard— can be managed and the grapes processed according to their potential rather than to a preset concept. This is an amazing step towards definition of terroir— a process that, without contemporary technology, took hundreds of years in Burgundy— and the results are being shared throughout Chile.
It is a great era of excitement and exploration. New vineyards with new character are proudly announced on a regular basis. Great strides are being made with grape varieties new to the region, such as Syrah and Malbec. From Elqui to Bio Bio, from the Pacific to the foothills of the Andes, the viticultural area of Chile is expanding. Wine quality is rapidly improving and prices are on a gentle rise, governed by Chile’ s lingering image as a supplier of cheap wine and a prevailing we-try-harder attitude. Now is a great time to discover the new Chile. Try a hillside Carménère or a coastal Sauvignon Blanc, not just for the value, but for the high quality. �
CARMÉNÈRE An orphan finds a home
Chilean wines broke onto our market in the 1980s and we discovered the merits of exceptional value“ Merlot.” Or at least that’ s what the label said. The nascent and still fragile Chilean export market built on“ Merlot” experienced rampant anxiety when Professor Jean-Michel Boursiquot of Montpellier’ s School of Oenology publicly revealed that perhaps half of all Chilean“ Merlot” was an imposter: Bordeaux Carménère!
Carménère was commonly grown in Bordeaux until the late 1800s when a pest called phylloxera decimated the vineyards. The growers replanted new vine stock but Carménère was almost impossible to find— growers weren’ t too disappointed because it was a“ difficult” vine anyway. Abandoned, Carménère was destined to be an historical footnote if not for pre-phylloxera vine shipments sent to Chile. For more than 150 years, it received benign protection from wine growers due largely to its similarity to Merlot.
The Chilean Department of Agriculture officially recognized Carménère as a distinct variety in 1998, and, out of the closet, Carménère had a chance to shine. Chile’ s climate proved ideal, and winemakers rose to the challenge of bringing out the grape’ s best attributes.
Today, Carménère, a variety named for the deep crimson( carmin) colour of its autumnal foliage, is proudly regarded as Chile’ s signature grape variety, a national viticultural treasure that defines Chilean wine on the international market. Not bad for an orphan a long way from home. www. banvilleandjones. com 39