While Chile may not be the world’s biggest wine producing country, it is certainly the longest. Stretching out over more the 4,300 kilometres north to south – almost four times the length of Italy – Chile boasts all the variety of terroir you would expect from such an immense expanse.
Perhaps this is why interest in the country’s wines has increased quite so significantly in both Hong Kong and China over recent years. Of course, this was also helped by Chile becoming only the second country to have its wines exempted from mainland import taxes. The first to be so privileged was New Zealand.
Most of the mainland’s Chilean imports, however, have been at the cheap and cheerful end of the market. Chile is actually China’s biggest supplier of bulk wine, as well as its third largest supplier of bottled wines.
It is also Hong Kong’s fifth largest supplier of wine by value and its fourth largest by volume. Tellingly, most of what is consumed in either jurisdiction costs somewhat less than either HK$ or RMB100 per bottle.
The challenge now is to persuade wine lovers that they should be considering Chile’s higher end wines, as well as being prepared to pay a premium for them. Higher quality bottles are certainly available and, fortunately, those in the know are only too happy to endorse them.
Debra Meiburg, Asia’s first Master of Wine, is one such luminary. She says: “I feel that, with Chile, I can never keep up. It’s a race to stay up to date as the country is really finding its feet in terms of wine and discovering phenomenal winemakers.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, another advocate is Julio Alonso Ducci, Asia Director of Wines of Chile, the Chilean wine industry’s trade promotion body. He says: “Our history of winemaking dates back to the 16th century and Chile’s vines also escaped unscathed from the phylloxera outbreaks that hit the US and Europe, ensuring they produced an exceptional purity of fruit, balance and intensity.”
All true. Well up to a point. Wine has indeed been made in Chile since the arrival of the conquistadors back in the 1540s. The major Bordeaux varieties, the Cabernet Sauvignon, the Merlot, the Carmenere and the Cabernet Franc, however, only arrived in the 18th century. It wasn’t until the 19th century, though, that true wine making expertise reached the country.
While Chile’s vineyards benefitted from being spared the phylloxera blight that affected much of the rest of the world, the real boost to the country came quite a bit later later. Unable to find work in those devastated vineyards back home in Europe, a significant number of notable French winemakers began making their way to Chile, bringing with them many generations of expertise.
There has been a good deal of mythologizing regarding the purity of Chilean grapes. This has largely been based on the fact that Chile’s vines, unlike those of France, didn’t have to be grafted on to American rootstock to fight off phylloxera. The reality is, though, that the improvement in the quality of Chilean wine – something that actually began in the late 20th century – is more directly attributable to the progress that had been made in the understanding of the terroir and the investment in technology.
As any French winemaker will tell you, the vine is there to communicate with the terroir. Accordingly, in Chile, more and more viable areas are being identified and planted with just the right grape varieties.
Two years ago, Meiburg visited Chile and she believes that this process has transformed the country’s wine map beyond recognition. She said: “Chile benefits from a combination of both the coastal and Andean influences, from north to south, as well as the perfect climatic conditions for producing naturally crafted, premium cool climate wines.”
New vineyards are now being planted all along the Pacific coast to the west of the country. Over in the east, meanwhile, more vineyards are being planted further and further up in the mountains as part of a bid to produce more high-altitude wines.
These change ever more of the appellations recognized under Chile’s Denominacion de Origen or D.O. system producing very impressive wines. Most notable among these are Colchagua Valley, Loncomilla, Cachapoal Andes, Aconcagua Valley, Leyda-San Antonion, Casablanca Valley, Alto Maipo, Maipo Valley and Apalta Valley.
With grapes and terroir now being more scientifically matched, it is possible to look beyond Carmenere – which has become to Chile what Malbec is to Argentina – and to the potential of many more different grapes. Along the coast Syrah wines, which recall the Rhône rather than Australia, are being made, while Pinot Noir is also doing well. A Rhône influence is also apparent in the Central Valley areas, where Grenache and Mourvedre are being grown, alongside old vine specimens of Carignan and Malbec.
Pais probably came to the country with the conquistadors and it was once Chile’s most widely-planted red grape. That distinction now belongs to Cabernet Sauvignon, while the still ubiquitous Pais is typically made into undistinguished jug wines. Some producers, though, are now attempting to make wines of a higher quality from the old Pais vines.
Syrah is rapidly expanding its vineyard acreage, but Carmenere remains the country’s signature grape. This, though, is mostly because, although originally from Bordeaux, it is now only infrequently planted in it home territory.
Chile is the only country to have made nurturing Carmenere a specialty and this happened mostly by accident. The grape was thought to be Merlot until 1994 when subsequent laboratory analysis identified it as a quite different variety. Since that time, Chilean wine makers have accorded it a quite special status.
Chile is also now producing more interesting white wines than the somewhat generic Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs to be found on so many supermarket shelves. The clue as to where the qualities can, as ever, be found when considering the comparative prices.
Meiburg recently hosted a tasting of Chilean red wines, beginning with a very enjoyable 2013 Gran Reserva Chardonnay from Vina Carmen’s vineyards in the Casablanca Valley. Another pleasantly surprising wine from the same region was the 2014 Quintay Q Grand Reserve Pinot Noir from Paula Cardenas, a winemaker who clearly took her inspiration from Burgundy. Perhaps not surprisingly, she is a firm believer in biodynamics.
There was only one Syrah wine in the tasting and it proved a little disappointing. By way of compensation, a Santa Rita Pehuen Carmenere from the Apalta Valley – with 10 percent Syrah in the blend – was judged very fine indeed.
It also demonstrated that, although we are repeatedly told that most New World wines are bottled ready-to-drink, many of the good ones actually repay keeping. The wine in question, for instance, was a 2008, and arguably not yet at its peak.
The trailblazer for premium Chilean wine, of course, has to have been Montes. This was established as recently as 1987 by Aurelio Montes and his partners. Its Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon was a game changing wine for Chile, setting new standards for the industry.
Inevitably, it now has a number of close competitors. Despite this, though, the Montes Alpha wines – including Carmenere, Malbec, Merlot, Syrah and Pinot Noir, as well as Cabernet Sauvignon – remain unmistakably aristocratic by comparison.
While there were no Montes Alpha wines on offer at Meiburg’s tasting, there was an opportunity to taste Montes’ Taita red from the Colchagua Valley – a surprising 2009 vintage which Meiburg described perfectly accurately as “bling in a bottle.”
This wine represents Montes’s attempt to once again raise the bar. To this end, it is a blend of 85 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, together with a “winemaker’s selection” of other grapes, all varying as deemed optimum for each vintage.
This, along with the Santa Rita Carmenere, represented the high points of the tasting. As with the Carmenere, it is also a wine that will surely repay handsomely with longer term cellaring.
So how are the Chileans hoping to get the message out about their more rarefied offerings? Sensibly, they seem to have concluded that, as they have real quality to promote, the best way to do it is through education.
To this end, Wines of Chile in partnership with the Asia Wine Service & Education Center (AWSEC), is now offering a structured course in Chilean wine appreciation, with sessions being held in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
This is the first, and so far, only programme of its kind to be devoted to Chilean wines in China and Hong Kong. The course covers Chilean wine history, as well as information about the regions, grape varieties and the styles of the wines. For those truly taken with the subject, AWSEC will actually organise winery tours to Chile.
If nothing else, this certainly shows that Chilean wine producers are very serious about the China market. You can, however, enjoy a glass or two of the country’s finest without taking a single class.