Chile: Pensando Fuera de la Caja

Chile: Thinking Outside The Box

BY JOAQUÍN HIDALGO | JUNE 06, 2023

Apalta, Chile, one March morning. The veil of mist shrouding the mountain ridge that lends the region its name has only just lifted. Up on the slopes, the native forest perfumes the air, with its litre, peumo and quillay trees still vividly green despite the dry season. Lower down, a patchwork of vineyards crisscrosses the reddish soil.  

This relatively small Denomination of Origin is a microcosm of everything Chile has to offer. Major wineries like Montes, Neyén, Clos Apalta, Carmen and Ventisquero have bases here. However, there are also several small but venerable concerns, such as those run by the Cánepa, Muñoz and Quijada families. They were already well established in the early nineties when the region began Apalta’s meteoric rise to the top of the pile, making its name with a series of excellent reds.   

The topography of the Cordillera de la Costa varies from the gentle slopes of Itata to sheer ravines like the one seen in the photo in Cachapoal. In the background, we see the mountain’s southern slope, the cooler side, which hosts a lush, green native forest even at the end of the dry season.

Amid the vines, several new hotels and residential neighborhoods are also popping up; a rural setting with good connections to the outside world attracts developers. The wine industry is largely responsible for said boom across this natural amphitheater in the Central Valley.

That March morning, toward the end of my trip, one thing became clear: anchored by longstanding tradition in some areas while experiencing rapid change in others, the industry is looking for a path that meets everyone’s needs, including the part of Chile in touch with the outside world with a thriving export business and the part more focused on grapes and styles suiting the domestic market.  

I asked what might sound like a stupid question to Aurelio Montes, one of the leading figures in Chilean wine, who, at the age of seventy-four, has now overseen fifty-two harvests and is the president of Wines of Chile: “With all your experience and having seen how Apalta has transformed in recent years, where do you think the future of the wine business in Chile really lies?”  

Montes hesitated for a moment.

“I don’t really know how to answer your question,” he said. “But I’ll tell you something that a Franciscan monk friend of mine told me many years ago, something that’s making a lot of sense to me these days: ‘In life, success, money and happiness are like butterflies. The more you chase them, the further they fly away, but if you only stand still, you might find that they come to land on your shoulder.’”  

I felt he wasn’t talking to me but to a much larger audience, the entirety of the Chilean wine industry.

The aging room at Bodega De Martino one February afternoon. In addition to used barrels, large and small, the winery has a collection of casks and foudres that can be seen behind the barrels. The trend in Chile today is heading toward a more rational use of oak.

Several New Paths

Chilean producers are increasingly concerned that their wines are beginning to lose the wider public’s interest. You might think they’re right until you take the trouble to taste them in detail. While some are committed to following trends that will open up new markets, more interesting things are happening outside the glare of the spotlight.

This is why the butterfly metaphor seems so apt.

After traveling approximately 2,800 miles, tasting over a thousand wines and visiting around forty wineries and vineyards for this report, I believe that the most exciting wines in Chile are made outside the commercial box. Some are firmly plugged into the rat race, understandably trying to hit the sales sweet spot, but others patiently study the different variables existing in their terroirs, trying out new styles and ideas that might open up new flavor horizons.

Inside that box, we find the ripe, indulgent reds that Chile sells en masse in the $12 price range and below. Outside that box, we find dry, vibrant whites, silky, taut reds of the coast, and other profound, fairly concentrated reds from the Secano interior dry farming area that are anything but sweet. These are wines that offer distinctive, alternative flavor palettes, wines that seasoned drinkers will enjoy discovering.

This is my fourth Chile report for Vinous. Over that time, I have developed a more nuanced knowledge of the different regions and also met many producers who are following their convictions to introduce new styles and profiles. Overall, it is my belief that the wines of Chile are being improved by these new ideas and approaches, and this is reflected in my scores. Another contributing factor is that many of the wines this year came from a cool year, 2021, and it had a wonderful effect: there are a number of bottles that these revamped philosophies that are very much worth trying.

Below, I delve further into these trends by region.

The soils of the Cordillera de la Costa range are rich in meteorized granite, as seen at the Belén vineyard belonging to Viña Morandé in Casablanca (right). In Chile, these soils are known as maicillo. However, the range also features soils rich in slate and schists, as seen in this fragment (left) from the unusual metamorphosed volcanic soil at the La Cornellana vineyard belonging to Viña La Rosa in Peumo.

Maule, Itata and the Secano