The Chilean Coast: Where the Pacific Shapes Vibrant Reds and Whites 

BY JOAQUÍN HIDALGO | JULY 03, 2024

The typical Chilean wine journey starts in Maipo or Colchagua. Maipo is where it all began—the birthplace of the Cabernet Sauvignons that earned international fame with their ripe, plush, indulgent profiles. Colchagua receives wide consideration because its expansion was driven by the export boom that saw the adoption of a similar flavor profile for its Carménères.

Winemaker Felipe Tosso at the Tara vineyard of Viña Ventisquero, in the Huasco River Valley, Atacama. The vineyard was beginning to bud as early as August 2023, and the salt that surfaced in the winter was starting to disappear.

And yet, Chile has plenty more to offer, presenting a wide range of unusual profiles that are well worth exploring. For instance, there are well-defined, vibrant wines from coastal terroirs that aren’t so familiar to consumers, who sometimes confuse these regions with the mainstream valleys, even though they taste quite different in the glass. Here, whites and reds are shaped by the Pacific Ocean.

Given the country’s extensive coastline, it’s surprising that wines from places near the ocean aren’t better known. The whites are saline, with breathtaking acidity and concentration, while the reds are agile and reductive with low pHs and well-developed ripeness, pleasantly reminiscent of the Northern Rhône Valley. 

The coastal terroirs span several parallels of latitude from Biobío in the south to Río Huasco up in Atacama; the distance between 36°S and 28°S is about 700 miles, the equivalent of traveling from the Sta. Rita Hills to the northern border of California. The landscape changes from a thick forest in the south to the driest desert in the world in the north. A huge wall of cold water known as the Humboldt Current runs the length of the coast and out to sea, flowing up from the Antarctic circle and acting as a buffer that moderates temperatures in the vineyards, keeping the general temperature low, both day and night. The climate here is cool but sunny. On summer mornings, the effect of thermal inversion causes a thick fog that only clears after midday when the sun burns off the clouds and finally wins out over the Humboldt Current.

Combined with this climate, another major defining feature is the patchwork of soils formed by a unique feature of the Chilean coast: an ancient mountain range known as the Cordillera de la Costa, essentially a vast ridge of granite. The granite is grayer in some areas to the north, while it’s orange and yellow to the south. Granite is the base on which everything else is built almost everywhere in the Cordillera de la Costa. In the plains in the valley, the decomposed rock gives way to clays that lend the wines a rustic energy. Stratified deposits and ridges with poor, shallow soils make for concentrated grapes on the slopes. In a few isolated stretches, the granite shifts to slate, which yields compact wines. In others, plains formed by ocean flooding craft wines with a notably chalky texture. Distinct pockets like these come to define a range of terroirs, ranging in size from ten hectares (like in Cobquecura) to 230 hectares (like in Quillota).

Despite this complexity, one generalization is relatively easy to make: on the west-facing slopes, where the Pacific winds are stronger than the sun, varieties with very short ripening cycles are the norm: Riesling, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and a little Pinot Noir and País. On the east-facing slopes, where the sun is strong enough to warm up the cool sea air, varieties with longer cycles thrive—mostly Syrah and, to a lesser extent, País, Cinsault and Carignan.

The more Chilean wines I taste, the more I’m convinced that the coast is where readers will find some of the country’s most distinctive wines. That said, for this report, I placed a particular focus on these coastal wines. Of the 600+ wines I tasted, just over 200 hailed from coastal regions, and they were easy to identify. In contrast to the Central Valley, where richness and sweetness are the rule, reds from the coast are slender, elegant and full of unusual vitality. The whites, meanwhile, have a refreshing transparency and purity. But, for a fuller picture, it’s best to glean a little more background about each region in turn: Limarí, Casablanca, Leyda and others Itata coastal communes, like Coelemu and Cobquecura.

Two faces of Casablanca. The photo on the left is from Belén Estate, Viña Morandé, taken at 10am. The photo on the right is from Casas del Bosque vineyard in Las Dichas, taken the same day at 1pm. The fog, caused by the Humboldt Current's effect on air moisture, is a regulating factor for coastal wines.

The Development of the Coast

As Spanish Colonial Chile consolidated itself, the most fertile land in the center and to the south was in the greatest demand. Abundant winter rains allowed for dry farming in some areas, while the irrigation systems built in the Central Valley were responsible for a large portion of the country’s modern agriculture. This is why the southern coast, from Biobío to Itata and Maule, was mainly planted with heritage grapes, such as País and Muscat of Alexandria.   

However, the modern revolution on the coast truly began in the 1990s with developments and plantings in Casablanca. Until then, the area was mostly used to produce milk. Pablo Morandé planted the first experimental vineyards in the mid-1980s. By the 1990s, Casablanca had become a beachhead for exploring cool, irrigated areas. Over the past two decades, several coastal hubs have developed: one in the Valparaíso Region, which, in addition to Casablanca, also encompasses Leyda and Quillota; Limarí in Ovalle; Huasco in Atacama, and Pumanque and Paredones in O’Higgins. These coastal regions all emerged in the past two decades, lending their own distinctive flavors to a diverse patchwork. Equally split between red and white varieties, there are around 15,000 hectares under vine on the Chilean coast, constituting about 12% of the country’s entire surface area.

The White, Saline North

Few regions in Chile display as much personality as Limarí in Ovalle and Huasco in the Atacama. Within what might be described as a coastal desert, these locations offer something uncommon by the sea in Chile: calcareous soils. In the former case, they’re maritime in origin, combined with clay soils. Huasco bears the typical alluvial soils of the desert, with all manner of gravel and concentrations of calcium salts.