Wine

Chillin' in Chile

Exploring the New Frontiers of South American Wine

    I just finished a little kayaking escapade into the Strait of Magellan, the passage between the very southern tip of mainland Chile and Tierra del Fuego. We were with a small group of adventuresome folks from our cruise ship, the Insignia. Other than the fact that our kayak leaked, the paddle was uneventful, and we finished up with the traditional Chilean drink called Pisco Sour, which is really a shot of Grappa (distilled wine leftovers) with some lime and sugar.
    My wife, Kathy, and I are helping lead the floating University of Zinfandel around Cape Horn from Chile to Argentina, conducting seminars on our traditional California grape, Zinfandel. As I write, we are also exploring the exciting wines of the southernmost countries of South America—Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.
    In the 1990s, Chile became a leading international exporter of reasonably priced, good quality wines. It is a long narrow country, barely more than 150 miles wide, but extending more than 3,000 miles north to south on South America’s western coast. The northern part is pretty much inhospitable desert and the southern region, while full of beautiful, green, forested islands and fjords, rarely gets warmer than 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. But with the Andes Mountains to the east, and a large coastal range to the west, central Chile (around the capital, Santiago) is a beautiful, fertile region with a mostly ample water supply from the mountain snowpack—perfect for growing grapes.
    Chile is noted for producing robust, rich red wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec and their special grape Carménère. This exotic Bordeaux grape was thought to be extinct after the phylloxera epidemic of the late 1800s in France, but it somehow made its way to Chile and was mistaken for Merlot for more than 100 years. French viticulture experts who visited Chile in the 1990s were very excited to find Carménère alive and well in South America. It has now been propagated and distributed to the best growing areas and, in tandem with Cabernet Sauvignon, promises to be the future of the Chilean wine industry.
    Probably the best areas for growing grapes for Chile’s rich red wine varietals are the Maipo Valley, extending south from Santiago about 120 miles, and two small offshoots—the Colchagua Valley to the west, and Apalta to the north. If you happen down this way, a wonderful place to stay and eat is the Hotel Santa Cruz, occupying an old train station and about two city blocks in Santa Cruz in the Colchagua Valley.
    There are many grapes planted slightly farther south in the central Chilean province of Curicó and the Maule Valley, where some nice white wines are made. To the west of Santiago is a beautiful valley called Casablanca where Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc are making great headway.
    Most Chilean viticulture takes place on flat fertile land, which produces a lot of grapes, but not top quality. A few wineries are finally getting the quality picture and planting on slopes and hillsides with shallow rocky soils. This is particularly evident with leading wineries in the Apalta region, such as Casa Lapostolle and the Montes family winery, which produces one of my favorites: Purple Angel, a blend of Syrah and Petite Verdot. Some other vintners, such as Almaviva, have adopted small-vineyard production and total gravity-flow operations, which are very expensive and time consuming but produce very rich and intense wines. The high-end wines from these producers are expensive, sometimes priced at more than $100 a bottle. However, many of their lower-priced wines, can be great bargains. For instance, the Colchagua winery Viu Manent has a reserve 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon that is delicious and retails at about $12.
    I’ll continue the saga of South American wine in the next issue, but right now I’m looking forward to some excellent steelhead fishing tomorrow morning, and I can rest assured that we will find something great to drink with it.