The total area of vineyards in Chile occupies more than 141,000ha, which has a potential for wine production of close to 1,200ML in an average year with good weather conditions. The main wine production areas are the valleys of Cachapoal, Colchagua, Curicó and Maule, which contribute more than 72% of the national vineyard area. In 2017, exports of wine and must exceeded 967ML with a value of $2.067b. Chile is the number one exporter of wines from the New World, and fourth in the world, surpassed only by France, Spain and Italy. Today, the eyes of Chile’s wineries are firmly focused on China. Faced with poor results in the US and the UK, once its main markets, companies have focused their efforts on Asia’s rising giant, where they sold $254m worth of wine in 2017, an increase of more than 30% in value.
Media and marketing
There are very few specialised wine magazines in Chile. Wineries prefer to focus their marketing budgets on international titles such as Wine Spectator, or with critics such as James Suckling and Luis Gutiérrez of the Wine Advocate. This means the 100-point scale is still very influential, so much so that even British critics like Tim Atkin MW, once reluctant to user the “Parkerised” system of wine scoring, have ended up yielding.
For this reason, publications such as Vitis Magazine, Vinos y Más, Vendimia, Gourmand and Uva have had to close their doors. Today only La CAV and Placeres remain, both linked to wine clubs and distributors; La CAV, which has more than 12,000 subscribers, is owned by Eduardo Chadwick, president of the Errázuriz group and one of the main international faces of Chilean wine.
Wine guides
As with magazines, Chilean wine guides are not numerous nor do they influence the market much, but they do show a very clear image of the Chilean wine scene. The authors of these guides are considered the most relevant wine communicators, according to a survey in Capital Magazine, Chile’s most important economic publication. Published for the first time in 1999, Descorchados is the oldest and most influential of the guides. Written by journalist Patricio Tapia, it presents scores and tasting notes for 1,800 wines. There are also international versions showcasing labels from Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. “We like to think that today is the best time to be a wine journalist in Chile and that it is a privilege to be able to publish a guide that tries to portray all those changes, all that energy. But, above all, today is a great time to be a wine consumer,” Tapia says.
Each year, the magazine La CAV publishes a guide called Tasting Table written by its director, Ana María Barahona, based on the blind tastings held weekly by its panel of specialists, composed of journalists and sommeliers. The ranking of this publication is based on the price-quality ratio of the wines. Finally, there is my own Vinos con Cuento, the most recent but (I like to think) most innovative guide. Its goal is to break the stranglehold of scores and bring consumers back to irreverence and humour, so it includes pairings with movies, music and TV series. So far it’s been a successful adventure in a wine world that is still very conservative.
Sommeliers
Historically, service in Chile has been characterised by apathy and disinterest. Waiters, who monopolised the sale of wine in restaurants, had little knowledge and no desire to go beyond big brands. Wineries encouraged this, paying waiters for each bottle they sold. Today the situation is changing, and fast. Thanks to a push by Héctor Vergara, Latin America’s first and only Master Sommelier, the vocation of service has been professionalised. Vergara himself is quite a character, formerly a jet engine mechanic with the Chilean Air Force and member of the Communist Youth. Imprisoned and tortured during the military coup of 1973, he later went into exile in the UK, France and Canada where he learned about wine. In 1991, after the death of his wife, he returned to Chile and founded the School of Sommeliers of Chile. Thanks to his generosity, a young group has emerged – including names such as Ricardo Grellet, Héctor Riquelme and Marcelo Pino – that has laid to rest the bad habits of the past. Today, sommeliers are an important part of Chile’s culinary culture, which now boasts one of the world’s top 50 restaurants, Boragó in Santiago.
New associations
The largest association of producers is Vinos de Chile. Founded in 2007, today it represents more than 85% of the volume exported. Its president is Mario Pablo Silva, of Viña Casa Silva, and its main objective is to strengthen the industry by contributing to government policies such as free trade agreements, research and development of new technologies and job training. Its international arm, Wines of Chile, has created a strategy to 2025 aimed at increasing both the demand for and the average price of Chilean wine, with annual targets of 3.2% growth in value and 6% growth in volume. Although the country exports more than $1.5b of bottled wine a year, its average price is still very low, at just $28.00 per 12 bottle case.
This means small and medium companies struggle to remain profitable and it is why, in recent years, new associations of small producers have appeared that do not identify with the guidelines of Vinos de Chile. The most successful is Movimiento de Viñateros Independientes (MOVI). Although it represents little more than 0.1% of the total national production, the noise it has made has been impressive. Today, after a decade, there are already 36 members who are working together to sell their wines abroad. MOVI has inspired other new associations, such as Vignadores de Carignan, representing 15 producers who are rescuing the tradition of dry farming of Maule; Colchagua Singular, which brings together 13 producers who do not bottle more than 20,000l each; Brutall, made up of farmers producing sparkling wines from Itata, which has some of the oldest vineyards in Chile; and an incipient movement called Casablanca Off.
New valleys and varieties
“The wines that will stand out in quality, personality and typicality will be born in more extreme places, old vineyards and more southern areas,” says winemaker Marcelo Retamal, responsible for the wines of Viña De Martino and his more personal project, Viñedos de Alcohuaz, located in the Elqui Valley 2,000m high in the Andes.
Traditionally, Chilean producers have made safe bets, planting in valleys with optimal agro-climatic conditions, meaning in generally warm areas with moderately fertile soils where production was generous and, even a few years ago, quite profitable. However, the scarcity of water, the increase in the costs of energy and labour and the constant uncertainty of the exchange rate have reduced profits and endangered companies that do not export more than one million cases. That is why, in recent years, there has been a shift to produce wines with greater character and identity of origin, resulting in plantations in more extreme places, such as in Atacama or Patagonia, high in the Andes.
These new ventures, which seek to place wines in higher price segments, can be grouped into two major movements: the first seeks unique places, where viticulture was previously unthinkable. The most paradigmatic case is perhaps the new denomination of Osorno, located in the 40th parallel of southern latitude. There, among forests, volcanoes and cows, some of the most exciting wines of the new Chilean scene are produced. “I am convinced that the new north of Chile is in the south,” says Rodrigo Romero, winemaker of Maquis and instigator of private project Trapi del Bueno. “In the coming decades, our oenology will take an important turn. New horizons will be developed in the cold climates of the south and large projects where sparkling wines, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay and especially Pinot Noir will head a new Chile full of elegance and delicacy, differentiation and character.”
The second of these movements involves those whose focus is on rescuing Chile’s living museums, the ancient vineyards planted hundreds of years ago that represent the cradle of the history of Chilean viticulture. Many winemakers have reinterpreted the grapes of rustic vines such as País, Cinsault, Carignan and Moscatel, creating wines with picturesque labels produced in clay pots and foudres (a large vat made of native raulí wood). The winemaking is all done in a very natural way, as it was almost 500 years ago. “The tendency goes towards the valuation of the ancient strains, those that for some reason were forgotten,” says Andrés Sánchez, winemaker at Viña Gillmore and president of Vignadores de Carignan. “They are a hidden treasure that is not only going to manifest itself in Chile, but probably in all the producing areas of the world. The next 10 years will be to rediscover vines that were abandoned and make them sing again.”
The domestic market
Chile is a small market and dominated by large wine companies, where consumption of wine has changed little over the years. It is stable at 14l per person a year, a small figure for a producing country which has 17m inhabitants. This situation has forced Chilean wineries to focus their attention and resources on export markets, and distributors to focus on domestic products. Imported wines are almost non-existent on Chilean shelves, with the exception of Argentine sparkling wines and some luxury brands, such as Champagne.
Large companies have their own distribution systems. This is the case with Comercial Peumo of Viña Concha y Toro or DESA of Viña Errázuriz, which also sell other brands, beers and spirits, both domestic and foreign. The fight for placement on the shelves of supermarkets is fierce. For a small winery, this market is expensive to enter; such players prefer to target specialised shops, restaurants, wine bars and hotels.
Among the companies that distribute to the on-trade segment, Cavas Reunidas, the owner of El Mundo del Vino stores, which offer a wide and varied portfolio of wines, stands out. Another of note is Vinoteca, which has done an efficient job with a small but very interesting group of wineries. Premium Brands specialises in luxury brands, a segment that grows at a rate of about 9% per year.
In recent times, Chile has seen a phenomenon of small, specialised wine stores springing up throughout the country, including Santo Vino in Iquique, Santiago Wine Club in the capital, La Cava del Pescador in Concepción and Cava Don Hernando in Punta Arenas. These ventures are still proving themselves; their ability to succeed will depend not only on their commercial efforts but also on a market that has not yet matured.
