Chile: El Niño Brought a Slow-Motion Season with a Long Harvest Window 

BY JOAQUÍN HIDALGO |

When I visited Chile in March, predictions for the year’s vintage were lukewarm. By the middle of the month, when the harvest is usually in full swing, producers in most regions hadn't started picking their grapes, except for the north, where the cycle was accelerated.

While there, I visited various vineyards and tried a few grapes. They had a pristine, bright color—the kind you see just after veraison has finished when they look so good you’re tempted to guzzle them down until the acidity and lack of sugar curb your enthusiasm. In Maipo, Maule and along the Aconcagua coast, I saw remarkably slow ripening across the board. The culprit was clear: the El Niño phenomenon.

This year, the Carménère was harvested as late as the beginning of May, while in previous harvests, the heat allowed wineries to complete their picking by the end of April.

This year, the Carménère was harvested as late as the beginning of May, while in previous harvests, the heat allowed wineries to complete their picking by the end of April.

The Year of El Niño

The 2023-2024 season will be remembered as the year when El Niño – a phenomenon sparked when temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise over a certain threshold – interfered with temperatures worldwide. This resulted in plenty of hot weather in the northern hemisphere, impacting Chile quite differently. “Counting 2024, I’ve seen three harvests when El Niño was at its most intense,” says Marcelo Papa, the Head Winemaker at Concha y Toro. “I’ve learned that for Chile, at least that means cold, rainy years.”

The winter of 2023 saw rainfall levels recover from previous droughts and then exceed averages. By the spring, the coldest in ten years, soils were saturated with water. Budding came late, while damp weather prevented frosts.

But nature’s generosity often comes at a price. Conditions did not improve, and in December, by the time the first heat waves arrived, viruses had set in vineyards that weren’t properly treated. This is down to more than just the weather. With properties full of wine and a general fall in prices for both wine and grapes, many producers don’t have the extra cash to treat their vines. This affected overall yields, as did the millerandage caused by the cold spring.

Veraison came erratically at the beginning of February, with a variation of as much as two weeks across the Central Valley and in some coastal areas, closer to the middle and end of the month. When I visited the vineyards at that time, there was a general sense that ripening was proceeding extremely slowly.

In some areas of the Central Valley, a couple of heat waves in summer blocked up the plants. Admittedly they weren’t too severe, but “they were enough to bring down the sugar levels in the plants,” says Felipe Tosso at Viña Ventisquero. Many producers by March were getting pretty anxious about how the year would turn out.

A Precious Window

And yet, from the middle of March onward, a long window of mild to cool temperatures arrived and continued until mid-April, evening up what had been feared to be an ominously imbalanced vintage. Only then did the year’s real work begin.

“We passed through the vineyard thousands of times,” says Andrea León at Clos Apalta. “None of our work in previous years applied in 2024 because each parcel ripened at its own pace; choosing when to harvest was one of the biggest jobs.” So, in addition to the gloomy weather, producers had to wait and agonize over the harvest schedule. Then, decisions about what to do with the grapes when they got to the winery had to be made. Emily Faulconer – who headed up Viña Carmen until last year when she moved to run Errázuriz – puts it vividly: “The tone this year was that if you couldn’t harvest today, you still had a week’s grace to get it done. In 2023, when you thought it was today, it was last week.”

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Two thousand twenty-four was characterized by the El Niño phenomenon, resulting in a cool spring and a summer with erratic veraison. By March, when the harvest window opened, the grapes had barely developed any sugars. Biding your time and choosing the perfect moment were the key factors in a year with less structure and more delicate fruit flavors.