Bio Bio is a newcomer to the international wine scene and the most southerly winery in Chile, Vina Corpora’s Veranda, is the biggest player in the region by a mile.
This is Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc country and there are interesting things happening with Pinot Noir that could transform the region’s wine scene.
The regional government is currently sponsoring a Pinot-improvement programme with Corpora. They’ve brought in five new clones from UC Davis and Corpora’s Bio Bio viticulturalist Diego Covarrubias, said: “We are a little bit limited with the clones that were brought to Chile a long time ago. I think we can find a much better clone suited to our climate.â€
They’re currently using clones including 777 and Covarrubias admitted it made wines that were “uniform†even from diverse sites. “I’m not sure all five of these new clones will be the solution but three could be. We could produce something superb that we are not able to with 777.â€
However we’re not going to see wines from the new clones for a while yet. They’re currently in a nursery and won’t be planted out in the fields until 2011 – expect to see the first crops in 2014-ish.
Those that are successful will be made available to quality-oriented growers in the Bio Bio region (but not the rest of Chile) to improve the region as a whole rather than Corpora keeping it for themselves. There’s a terroir study going on simultaneously to find those sites that would be suited to the new and improved Pinot.
