Chile's New Vision
Talented young winemakers are taking the country's wines to the next level of quality
On my recent trip to Chile, I visited 17 of the country's top wineries in eight days, tasting well over 200 wines in the process. "Quality is on the rise" is a mantra we've heard before. But based on the wines I tasted from the not-yet-released 2001 and 2002 vintages, the improvement is more dramatic and the reasons for it are different today. A new generation of winemakers now holds key positions at several of Chile's top wineries, and their work is breaking the colonial model that previously marked the industry.
In the past, progress in Chile's wine industry was stimulated largely by foreign investments. Lafite-Rothschild and Miguel Torres were the pioneers, followed by Robert Mondavi, Kendall-Jackson and Mouton-Rothschild. Through high-profile ventures they helped spotlight the country on the world stage, using imported winemakers who had honed their skills in other terroirs.
Today, Chile's new vision comes from a group of younger, mostly homegrown winemakers with a distinctly modern view of the world. Their key step has been to focus their attention on improving the country's vineyards.
Leading this group is Alvaro Espinoza, 40, who cut his teeth at Viña Carmen in the early '90s before moving on to other projects, including his own Antiyal. Espinoza has worked to promote techniques such as organic viticulture, advanced water management and hillside farming. "It's not easy for an owner to invest in the vineyards," he says. "In the winery, you can see tanks and presses. But in the vineyards, you see only leaves. It looks like the money just disappears out there."
Espinoza represents the link between Chile's veteran generation -- Aurelio Montes, Ignacio Recabarren and Pablo Morandé -- and today's rising stars. Until the 1990s, those who studied agriculture often went into the fruit business, as growing avocados was a better bet than entering into Chile's then-struggling wine industry. But Espinoza's success at Carmen sparked a surge of talent into the business.
One of the brightest new stars is Enrique Tirado, 36, who works with Concha y Toro and Viña Almaviva. Tirado has the distinction of working on both wineries' flagship wines, and both the '01 and '02 Almaviva and Don Melchor wines show tremendous promise in barrel tastings. Marcelo Papa, who has overseen Concha's drastically improved Casa Concha line, is 34.
In Colchagua, I tasted the '01 Clos Apalta from Casa Lapostolle, and I had trouble figuring out where the fruit started and ended in this astounding wine. Michel Friou, 36, can take credit for that. Down the road, Santiago Margozzini, 36, is handling the wines at MontGras, which has a major project based on its Ninquén hill plantings set for release. That Los Vascos, one of the venerable wineries which perhaps leans more to France than to Chile, has hired 34-year-old Chilean Marco Puyo as winemaker is as dramatic a sign of the current state of affairs as any.
At Quebrada de Macul, in Maipo, which makes the distinctive Domus Aurea Cabernet, Ana Salomó, just 32, has taken over for Recabarren, who resigned earlier this year (Patrick Valette has just been hired as head winemaker, but Salomó runs the day-to-day operations). Across the Maipo valley lies Odfjell Vineyards, a newcomer with rapidly improving wines, where Arnaud Hereu, 34, handles the vinification. In the Casablanca Valley sits Veramonte, another winery gaining ground quickly, and here Enrique Tirado's twin brother Rafael is working hard.
Harvesting later and getting riper fruit (and eliminating the green, minty notes that often marked the country's reds) are this group's top priorities now. Their tools include improving canopy management, lowering yields and isolating smaller and smaller parcels within a specific vineyard. These winemakers work hand in hand with their viticulturists today -- on my trip I spent as much time in the vineyards talking soil and root development as I did tasting wine. They are using the fancy toys -- stainless steel tanks, basket presses, gravity-flow wineries -- that came of the much-needed investments during the '90s. But they know that technology can do nothing if the grapes aren't of the best quality.
This group sits on the cusp of Chile's next phase, producing wines that could finally equal the best of California or France. Yes, quality is up and Chile has potential -- we know that. But this time the faces are new, the techniques and ideas are new, and the proof is about to be bottled.
