The gardens at Errazuriz

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The gardens at Errazuriz

Chile - Vineyards North to South

21 February - 4 March 2010

About the time that A&C started up, a friend brought to a ‘bring along a strange bottle of wine’ party, a bottle of Chilean Cabernet. It was the first Chilean wine that any of us had seen, and yes it had that strong character and vibrancy that has won Chile so many friends. It was surprising that it was so good, many of the wines at that time had a strange flavour that came from using barrels made from a local beech rather than oak.
The vineyards were a hot, muddle of grape varieties, some unknown, and the wineries, mostly clustered around Santiago, were, how does one put it ..... ‘traditional’.

So much has changed that it is hard to know where to start. Chile is 2700 miles long and at it’s narrowest point, 56 miles wide, sandwiched between Andes and the Pacific. The vineyards used to be almost entirely on the hot, Central Valley floor. It has grown enormously, but more important, it has spread to cooler, more interesting regions; north and east into the Andes foothills, west into the coastal area, and south, even as far as Patagonia.

Winemakers are extremely excited about what this can bring. This is ‘regionality’ in the making and they are not making the mistakes that others made before them. Pinot is going in near the coast; Syrah on high rocky terraces; Chardonnay on a cool plateau with limey soil. To say the results are encouraging is a huge understatement, Chile is buzzing, rather like Australia was in the late 80s. The difference is that things are moving even faster here. This tour offers the chance to meet the key winemakers at this critical time for the Chilean wine industry.

We visit new rising star regions starting in the north, high in the remote Elqui Valley where Falernia has proved that great Syrah can be made. The night sky here has about the highest luminosity in the world. Falernia has built a fantastic observatory here, where we are invited to dinner.
Next is Limari with its fabled terroir. Our visits are to the emerging stars, Ocho Tierras, Tabali and Tamaya. We take over a hacienda for our stay here.
Errazuriz in Aconcagua Valley was at the forefront of quality at the beginning and a tasting of their top wines over lunch will leave us in now doubt, that they still are. Former Errazuriz winemaker Ed Flaherty now runs Tarapaca and we expect great things here too. De Martino is something of a one stop shop for fine regional-varietal wines, as our tasting over dinner will show.

After Casablanca, Chile’s original cool climate region, we visit San Antonio one of its newest. Here at Casa Marin, Maria Luz Marin makes a speciality of Sauvignon Blanc, in fact its status is already legendary. We will see this pattern repeated, at Viu Manent, we taste sensational Viognier, and at Cono Sur, they have set themselves the hardest task, making truly great Pinot. We also taste their aromatic whites from Bio Bio.

In Colchagua, we are spoilt for choice but we cannot come here without visiting Montes in Apalta. We remember when the wines were made in a warehouse, now they have one of the most amazing wineries in the world, built on the principles of Feng Shui.

We meet genius winemaker Alvaro Espinoza, who we have met many times at his micro ranch ‘Antiyal’, and now we see how he applies his biodynamic concepts to the large scale at Emiliana. After this we lunch at Valdivieso’s beautiful vineyard.
We continue south into Maule. Here we stay for a couple of nights in a charming vineyard guest house and meet the stars of the area, Gilmore and J. Bouchon. We finish here; there are some vineyard south of here, but no visitable winerilco by train.

If you travelled with us to Chile on one of our early Chile tours, even the ‘cutting edge’ wineries we visited were fairly rudimentary. Largely their ambition seemed to be to make good value, solid wines. Come and see the difference now!