The message from Chilean wine producers throughout my trip has been: head for the hills or the coast – or both.
New vineyard plantations have slowly been moving from the valley floors to the hills or toward the sea for at least six years but the pace seems to have upped in the last year.
If you’ve been reading my previous blogs, you’ll have read that Montes, Ventisquero and Falernia are heading upwards or seawards to find cooler climes. And they’ve all been digging trenches in the vineyards to map the soils before planting.
At Tabali in Limari (500km north of Santiago), they’ve just made the first vintage from a new vineyard in the Fray Jorge national park a stone’s throw away from the ocean. The guys are getting mighty excited about it because they’ve discovered limestone soils, which has been elusive in Chile thus far. The vineyard is enormous and incredibly isolated (giving us time for a cheeky nap in the mini bus en route) but the first harvest of Sauvignon Blanc we tasted was incredible. We all agreed it was almost Loire-like with incredible salty/chalky minerality. The Wine Society have already snapped it up and you really need to try this to see that Chile can do cool climate, mineral whites. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to taste the Pinot Noir or Chardonnay as they’re not yet ready but I’ll be making it a priority.
Surprise surprise they’ve also just bought a vineyard in the mountains, which they’ll plant next year. Everyone is jumping on this bandwagon. It’s up at 2000 metres and the warmer temperatures plus increased UV light on the slopes means they’ll be putting in Carignan, Malbec and Garnacha among other things.
