FOOD & DRINK
ROX MAGAZINE
CHILE'S
NEW COOL Chile has much more to offer than the cheap and cheerful wine it is most known for. This beautiful country is home to some of the worlds most exquisite wines, each with their own story to tell. Words by Rebecca Palmer.
‘Donde la tierra se acaba … where the land ends’ said the helicopter pilot (and somewhat worryingly I thought) as I held my breath, gripped my seat and we swooped and looped over a tiny experimental vineyard perched perilously above the Pacific on its rocky promontory. ‘So that’s what the word ‘Chile’ means in the old Mapuche language’ he explained helpfully. ‘Or some say it is the cry of seagulls chille chille, or perhaps the Quechua word for snow, or todas esas cosas a la vez’. Indeed Chile is all these things and more. A land of contrasts and extremes, Chile is an extraordinary country. Spanning over 4600km north to south, it is also just 93 miles wide. Home to 18 million people and 2000 active volcanoes, it also harbours 200 thousand hectares of vines. In fact, Chile is often termed a viticultural paradise, thanks to its unique geography. In the north the vast Atacama desert proves a barrier to predators. Likewise, the mighty Andes (80% of Chile’s landmass!), rising to the east. To the south and west lie the waters of the Pacific. It is thanks to these protective natural boundaries that Chile was spared the ravages of phylloxera, the louse that devastated world vineyards in the
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late 19th century, and much more besides. So Chile is in many ways an enclave, its landscape contrasting ancient rolling hills and steep-sided valleys glittering with minerals, dense forests and deep lakes, snow-topped mountains and meandering rivers. There are vines everywhere, some planted long ago in the 1500s, the legacy of the Spanish conquistadors, others the result of widespread European migration in the 19th and 20th centuries; this is a land with a rich history, whose natural attributes, politics and culture have spawned a fascinating industry. The Chilean wine industry is significant in global terms, in 2018 it stood as 6th largest wine producing country in the world (12.9mhl. Source: OIV), and has become well-known in export markets, particularly for its well-priced easydrinking wines, which outperform so many other countries in terms of value for money. However, the inevitable flipside to this success is that Chile has found itself pigeonholed as a producer of the cheap and cheerful: uncomplicated, juicy wines tasting of their grape variety but not much more. ‘Does what it says on the tin’. However, Chile has much more to offer, as I found out last Autumn
