Chile

Viticulture in Chile has a long tradition. The country’s unique climatic conditions—with warm days and summer nights that sometimes drop below 10 degrees—offer ideal growing conditions for powerful, complex wines that in recent years have even put the French under pressure; because of cooler sites and higher labor costs, they have felt less competitive on the world market. The Spanish conquistadors brought winegrowing to South America. As early as the mid-16th century, the first vines were planted in Chile. The first varieties were the Spanish Albilho, Moscatel, País (Negra Peruana) and Torontel. According to tradition, the privateer Sir Francis Drake is said to have captured a ship in 1578 during his circumnavigation that was to carry 1,770 wineskins from Chile to Peru—evidence that Chilean wine was already being exported at that time.
Viticulture in the Elquí Valley

Modern Chilean winegrowing began when French winemakers immigrated in the mid-19th century and brought their varieties with them, such as Cabernet Sauvignon.

The old Bordeaux grape Carménère is considered a typically Chilean variety. Nowhere else in the world is this grape cultivated more professionally and extensively than in Chile. Together with Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Merlot and other well-known varieties such as Pinot Noir, Carménère belongs to the vines that were re-imported worldwide: in the 19th century Chile was spared the great phylloxera plague thanks to its geographic isolation, so the descendants from undamaged old Bordeaux vines are especially prized. Even to France, after the eradication of entire regions, grape varieties were re-imported from Chile.

Chile is the only country in the world that has so far been spared phylloxera. Downy mildew has also not occurred in Chile to date. As a result, fewer chemicals can be used, and grafting of vine seedlings can be completely dispensed with.

In the mid-1980s, Chile’s wine exports were still marginal. Although wine has been grown and vinified in the country since colonial times, the quality was not previously at world-market level. In 1985, Chile exported wine worth just 10 million US dollars. Thirteen years later it was already 550 million. The boom began in 1981, when the Spanish firm Miguel Torres built a huge winery in the Central Valley near Curicó. Numerous foreign investors followed, including Rothschild, Larose Trintaudon, Grand Marnier, Robert Mondavi and the Christian Brothers. Anyone with a name in Bordeaux is currently trying to buy into Chile and develop terroir.