THE CHILEAN WINE INDUSTRY

In the mid 1500’s winemaking began in Chile with the arrival of Spanish missionaries and the varietal País for celebrating the church sacraments. The custom of winemaking spread south quickly: some 500 kms to Concepción by 1850 and north 400 kms to Copiapó soon after. Today these areas in fact delimit the modern appellation system : the Bío Bío Valley in the south and the Limarí Valley in the north.

In the 1850's, industrialists of the booming Chilean economy began to introduce French vines commercially, initially in the Maipo Valley. Several of Chile's more traditional vineyards began here and continue to produce wine there today.

The introduction of cabernet sauvignon, cot / malbec, carmenére (at that time one of the principal grapes of the right bank in Bordeaux) pinot noir, sauvignon blanc, semillón, riesling, and others then began in earnest, principally fuelled by those with large fortunes who were travelling to and sending their children for schooling in Europe. With the vines came European experts (principally French owing to the relatively recent independence from Spain) to tend the vines, make wines, and to build veritable palaces and design the gardens around them.

The trans-Atlantic trade of vines and plants was heightened in part due to the European fascination with the exotic plant species of Chile—which they in turn began introducing in Europe. It is important to note that this period occurs just prior to when Phylloxera began to wreak havoc in North America and Europe. This, the greatest of all vineyard pests never arrived on Chile’s shores and the plantings of this epoch enjoyed their own private evolution for the better part of a century before, in the 1980's, technology and modern clones would again be imported. During the time of phylloxera in Europe many in the industry lost their livelihood and a significant brain drain occured toward the few parts of the world where the vines were not affected.

The early twentieth century is a story of seclusion and distance from the world for Chile. Despite its turn-of-the-century success in wine, two world wars and decades of state protectionism forced the country down a solitary path that technologically isolated it from the world for nearly 50 years. The mid-20th century Agrarian Land Reform took its toll on Chile’s wine industry, and the country’s relative isolation from the increasingly globalised, trade-oriented world essentially kept Chile out of the wine trade for decades more. The country reversed its closed-door policies in 1980’s, effectively giving rise to the next wave in the history of Chilean winemaking.

From 1980, the legal liberalization and the country's economic opening kicked off a revolution in the wine industry. The Spanish influence must be credited (one Spaniard's, more correctly), Miguel Torres. The Chilean wine industry outfitted itself with modern machinery and equipment, improved its planting and irrigation technology, incorporated stainless steel tanks and French oak barrels and began to utilize better quality corks and bottles.

Between 1982 and 1983 production reached its peak, coinciding with a significant reduction in domestic consumption. Both factors provoked a crisis of proportions, with a fall in prices and vineyards being replaced with other fruit crops. At the same time, the historic trend of family-owned wineries was replaced by economic groups and corporations, which included international participation, effectively modernizing the business.

The Chilean wine country is a mosaic of flavours and styles as varied as the geography, climate and the people themselves. Building on the unprecedented success of the big-four varietals (chardonnay, cabernet, merlot and sauvignon blanc), more than a decade ago Chile undertook a diverse enterprise of hillside plantings, drip irrigation, vineyard planting closer to the Pacific coast, higher into the Andes and deeper into the south in the region of the Araucania.

The world has begun to take notice of these innovating winemakers who have planted pinot noir, viognier, syrah, zinfandel, mouvedre, sangiovese, gewürztraminer and riesling in many locations that will only add to the complexity of flavours in the Chilean mosaic of tomorrow. More and more consumers know the names Casablanca, Maipo and Colchagua, but these are just the beginnings of a host of fun-to-pronounce appellations as unique as the hands that are defining them. It is this mosaic of wineries that comprises Wines of Chile, ranging from boutique-oriented cellars producing a few thousand bottles to multi-appellation publicly-traded companies.

Alta Cima is one of the boutique wineries which produces miniscule volumes of only a handful of wines. Millaman, on the other hand, is the brainchild of one of the Italian families which arrived in Chile in the mid-1800s and who have built a diverse export-focused wine business across various regions in Chile. Both of these wineries are situated near Curicó in sub-region VII which is called Del Maule.

For comprehensive information on the Chilean wine industry, visit: www.winesofchile.org

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