This year, the first of the big tastings, of a jam-packed autumn season,
is the annual Chilean bonanza. Chile has, over the last three or four
years, lost its way. The wines seem to have become somewhat homogenised,
and, despite some of the deeper-pocketed companies releasing a few super
cuvées (of which more later), there has been little to get really
excited about. The lack of coordination behind the scenes has not helped
– no cohesive, coordinated marketing campaign is one reason for this.
The other is that the existing players have been fighting tooth and nail
for a slice of the pie. The result of this battle is a largely amorphous
band of highly discounted, vaguely drinkable, dubiously varietal, student
party fodder, with a smattering of totally awesome wines as a molecule thin
enticing veneer.
I am delighted to announce that, as of earlier this year there is a new,
generic Chilean body in the UK, and already things have started to look a
little healthier. I expect that we will see some rapid improvements
in winemaking and communication over the next few years. That is, of
course, if the Chileans allow us to deliver constructive criticism (that’s
you when you spend your hard earned pounds, and me, with this exhaustively
tasted newsletter). If they listen they are bound to augment their
sales and in doing so increase the current average bottle price of £3.83.
If they don’t, they will continue to hover around their current six per cent
of the market, and have to put up with a reliance on own label, varietal,
sub-four-pound, chain store bottlings, and be resigned to losing the momentum
gained by some of their more daring forays into intelligent, honest, complex
and inspired cuvées that are featured in this Issue.
You might (but I hope not, after all you know the tone here) think this
a little preachy. But we have all seen this pattern before. Remember
Bulgaria? It promised so much in the early eighties but, cloth-eared,
has not moved an inch since. Every country in the wine world has, over
the last decade, and that includes France, Germany, Italy and Spain, let
alone NZ, Australia and South Africa, worked their nuts off to woo wine drinkers
in this extremely competitive arena. We see the results everyday on
wine merchants shelves. I personally love seeing international winemakers
try to outperform each other. This ongoing competitive streak has lead
to better and better wines. Unfortunately Chile is not quite up to
speed at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that all is lost. Far from
it, I reckon everything is set to change in this ribbon-thin, multi-climatic,
potential winemaking utopia. All it needs is a little bit more graft,
a more complete understanding of the unique Chilean topography and some encouragement
from us, the drinkers, in recognising the genuine skill that is already managing
to produce the calibre of wines featured in this Issue.
Chile’s current position, as far as expertwine is concerned, is succinctly
summed up as the following - there is an unusually large gap between those
wineries getting it right and those getting it wrong in today’s Chile.
Over the last two weeks I have tasted over 300 Chilean wines. Here
are the best twelve, with the reasons as to why they are worthy of expertwine
status and also why you need them in your cellar. Next year there will
be more candidates I’m sure, and the year after that, more still. In
fairness, I may have missed a few crackers, as there were 87 tables, each
sporting a supposed maximum of twelve wines at the Wines of Chile tasting.
Many apologies to those people I missed - I will track you down. But
one complaint to this event’s organisers is that given a fair wind and a
free run of the floor, I don’t know a taster alive who can knock off a thousand
wines in seven hours. The only reason I managed to navigate so successfully
was that I had been to a press preview tasting the week before and had already
found some stars and made a tentative top twelve. Quentin and I then
checked through these wines at the main event and tweaked the results where
necessary. Interestingly, the idea behind the press preview was to
impress us, the tasters, and indicate the ‘way they (the wineries) are going’.
On that basis some estates are galloping forward, others are stuck in the
mud and some are surely doomed!
PS there are a handful of wineries that didn’t make the line up, but who
are more than reliable – Casa Lapostolle, Errázuriz, De Martino, Miguel
Torres, Valdivieso and Viña Leyda.
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