Chile: Wine Economics 101

A full month of wine tasting and visiting wineries in Chile has done little to dampen my enthusiasm. I am more than ever a fan of the wines here, with a few caveats. The most notable of which is that the wines here are good in the "drink now and enjoy without scrutiny" class.

As it happens, this is one of my favorite classes of wines, and I believe it is the most important for consumers. The big expensive "age and wax poetic" wines get plenty of press but are not really what most people drink every day.

I have had a few age worthy wines, but even these fall much more into the 5 to 10 year range than the 20+ style of tannic, huge fruit and acidity types. It also means I haven't run across the "so hard they will never age" genre that too many producers in other parts of the world make.

The talk among the winemakers here is that the hard tannins of the 20+ wines are very difficult, if not impossible to achieve in Chile. They blame the ubiquitous heat. Certainly heat here is a huge problem that they are just starting to address.

Newer planting is being concentrated on microclimates that are a degree or two cooler than the existing vineyards, but the really cool regions are still being mostly ignored.

The coast (of which Chile has an abundance) and the Andes mountain slopes both seem to be obvious areas to explore. Logistics are problematic in that these regions are far from the existing winery facilities. Trucking grapes means cooling and expense, or reduced quality.

High heat also translates to high alcohol. I have heard rumors of experiments with reverse osmosis to reduce alcohol without affecting quality. There has been some promising examples of this is the similarly heat plagued vineyards of Napa, California. From what I have seen this is still something that is being talked about rather than actually practiced here in Chile.

One look at the local grocery store shelves points out the economic realities of the industry. $2 bottles of wine are not uncommon, and the more expensive labels tend to top out around $10. Expectation for the local industry here is much the same as in the rest of the world, well priced, simple wines are what Chile produces.

The higher priced, more complex and dare I say "better" wines are primarily destined for export. The very wines I came to Chile to find are actually more common in the US and Europe than they are at their birthplace.

This has led to a near schizophrenic attitude in Chile. They want to make better wines, but they know they have to export them to get the prices they need, and exporting leads to lower margins. And so, most wineries make a great deal of lower priced wines that help to defray the cost of making and exporting their best efforts.

This in turn perpetuates the market for lower priced wines in Chile. Since the local market doesn't get to experience what a few dollars (or in some cases double or more the dollars) will buy, they don't clamor for it. The classic chicken and egg.

This is really evident in the dessert wines. The market will not bear the necessary expense of sweet wines. Since they by definition are expensive to make, they tend to sell for a premium, everywhere but here. Most of the examples I have seen are priced in the $10 a bottle range, and too often that is all they are worth.

I am not expecting Chile to become a powerhouse producer of dessert wines, it is not their future. What is in the cards is greater quality for export, and a slowly growing appreciation for the higher priced wines in their own country of origin. In a nutshell, Chile is good, and getting better!

Chile: Restaurant Review - Divertimento Chileno

Every city needs a green oasis. In Santiago the Cerro San Cristobal Metropolitan Park rises above the skyline, beckoning the masses to the cooling comfort of its verdant slopes. Perched at the base of the hill is another oasis, this one gastronomic. The Divertimento Chileno restaurant.

Bruno Sacco created the restaurant here nearly 20 years ago, leasing the location from the park. At that time the cuisine was Italian, as is Bruno. As a leading and active restauranteur Bruno hosted various cooking competitions. In what would turn out to be a pivotal decision he held a contest for housewives and amateur cooks.

The result was a wealth of local foods that Bruno realized that his customers might enjoy. Starting with a few dishes the menu of Divertimento slowly switched from Italian to Chilean over a few years. Now with the next generation, daughter Flaminia Sacco as the chef, Divertimento has become the caretaker of the flavors of Chile.

The restaurant itself is deceptively large. From the front the outdoor patio and a small dining room look to be the extent of the seating. Upstairs a huge room which can hold 200 people has long been the scene for some of the most important cultural and political events in the city. This historical significance was recently related in the nation's largest newspaper.

The food is simple and expertly prepared in order to lend a familiar comfort to the many regular diners. Each dish we tried was better than the next. This is not the kind of restaurant that will grace the cover of most gastronomic periodicals, but chances are the editors of those same magazines eat here regularly.

Dining with Bruno Sacco, daughters Flaminia and her sister and the PR manager Michele, we had the wonderful opportunity to sample a great cross section of their menu.

An appetizer sampler included Milcao, a mix of cooked and raw potatoes that in this case was fried and served with with pickled flounder. The platter also held Smoked Salmon, a baked Empenada and Seaweed Ceviche. A taste of the Terrines they make in house were joined by the ever delectable Razor Clams Parmesan and a Long Neck Clam Ceviche.

After this plethora of flavors we tasted family style, a few of their main courses. The Fried Kingklip, like all of the dishes is a classic Chilean offering. Think a huge steak of tender white, flaky fish, deep fried.

The Chicken with Cognac is a twist on a local classic in that they make it for one instead of forcing a couple to share this sultry poultry, served in a crock. The sauce is so good that you are given an espresso cup to enjoy it like a soup.

The Beef Ribs fell off the bone and were wonderfully spiced. Not too sweet and not at all dry. The Creamed Spinach the ribs were served with was a welcome addition. One of my favorite vegetables I find that few restaurants really understand the subtle touch of cream that is needed.

Pastel de Choclo is a corn pie filled with meat and poultry that has to be experienced to be appreciated. The sweetness of the corn is in perfect contrast to the savory meats. Speaking of corn, the Humita looks a little like its cousin the tamale to an American used to Mexican cooking, but instead of dry corn meal it is more like a soft polenta or corn pudding inside the corn husks.

The traditions didn't stop with the dessert. We had the opportunity to try the national favorite Mote con Huesillos which is a refreshing blend of stewed dried peaches and grain, often served as a drink. Turning tradition upside down, Flaminia has taken the ubiquitous Gluhwein, the spiced hot wine that made its way from the Alps to Chile, and turned it into a Mousse. A great combination of flavors and texture as an appropriately summertime cool treat.

If you are looking for the classic flavors of Chile in the heart of Santiago a visit to Divertimento Chileno is an absolute must. You will be as enthralled as I was with the straightforward, but impeccably prepared foods that define a culture.

Chile: The Luxury of Casa Lapostolle

Like a wine cathedral the Clos Apalta winery rises out of the Colchagua in the Rapel Valley perched on a hill and looking from a distance like orange being offered to the gods. This is no coincidence, Casa Apalta is the flagship wine of Casa Lapostolle, which is owned by the makers of the orange and brandy flavored Grand Marnier.

The incredible gravity fed winery is only part of the reason to visit this stunning panorama. Adjacent to winery itself is the equally impressive Lapostolle Residence. Four "casitas," individual houses, await those who value comfort and pampering above anything as mundane as budget.

For $650 with dinner, or $550 without you can experience one of the finest and most comfortable overnight stays anywhere in the world. The meals are served at a central guest house that is replete with an infinity pool looking out into the vineyards.

The food was as resplendent as the view and the service and staff were uncommonly accommodating. They are ready and willing to fulfill any wish you may have to make your stay even more perfect. From horseback riding to the unforgettable Grand Pisco Sours while resting in the shade your needs are anticipated with a smile.

Once you can drag yourself out of the lap of luxury, stroll the few meters from the guest house to the winery for a tour unlike any you have ever expperienced. Designed to delight the eye as well as perform with simple ease, the Apalta winery is a descending spiral of beauty.

The grapes are given the royal treatment from the moment they arrive. Individual berry selection, usually reserved for the finest dessert wines is the initial step. This removes the ubiquitous stemmer crusher that blind tasting has shown to reduce the quality of their top tier wine.

The grapes are loaded into small hoppers that are wheeled to the top of the vats to discharge their load into the oak fermenters. Cooling coils ensure the control on the inside of the vat, while a bevy of misters and active cooling keeps the room at the ideal conditions.

The tanks drain their free run juice through a pipe system built into the floor, using the most gentle of gravity processes in order to prevent any harm that might come from pumping. The must is placed in a rare vertical press and the press wine is sent off for other endeavors, leaving only the finest ingredients for the Apalta bottling.

Down the spiral stair case to the first year barrel room reveals a sight that is rarely seen outside the first growth houses of Bordeaux. Perfect lines of new oak form a picture that speaks of the care and love that goes into producing the wine.

Another flight down yields the second year barrel room and a beautiful glass tasting table for those lucky enough to take the tour. Below the glass top rests the wine library that fewer still are given access to. Here every vintage of Apalta is stored waiting to be tasted at a much later date.

All of this is built into the solid granite that makes up the surrounding hills, and as if to accentuate that fact a wall of rough hewn granite graces the wine library and the stairwell of the winery. This look into the geology of the region is almost as telling as the obvious effort that went into building the imposing structure. Only a great deal of expense and love could have imagined and produced such a unique facility.

The Apalta Wine, which was recently award with the appellation of "The Best Wine in the World" by a leading publication is only one of many wines that are produced by Casa Lapostolle. In an epic tasting of 16 wines I was able to taste the past present and future of the winery. I was impressed not only by the wines, and the ever capable winemaker Andrea Iriarte but by her deep desire to continue to excel and acknowledgment that there is room for improvement. A typically Chilean attitude that the rest of the wine world would do well to adopt.

Visit Chile, visit the Colchagua where some of the finest wines hail, but above all if you can at all swing it, visit the astounding Apalta Winery and Residence. It is an event that you will cherish forever.

Chile: Restaurant Review - Astrid & Gaston

The people of Chile revel in their love for simple foods with simple flavors. This may be why one of the most recommended restaurants in Santiago is Peruvian. Astrid & Gaston hails from Peru but has spread out in the continent and even made its way to Spain.

The first impression as you walk into the Santiago Astrid & Gaston is of a hacienda decorated by a New Yorker. Modern and stark meets traditional and homey. The result is more than less pleasing, albeit minimalist.

The menu is like reading a history book as each of the dishes explain their origin or influence. The wine list is almost exclusively devoted to Chilean wines, as is common here, but there were a handful of imports for those who wish to look beyond Chile's shores.

We broke our meal up into several courses, creating our own tasting menu. The staff was happy to suggest a menu of their own, but we were looking for a bit more variety.

We started with a bit of mashed potatoes topped with raw tuna and cooked crab. The sauce was avocado and and sesame oil. The sesame, as it so often does, dominated the dish, but the potatoes helped to soften their effect.

Next up was a sampler plate of appetizers that included ribs and sweet potatoes, a bit of duck a spoonful of hominy corn with an intriguing sauce and a fried potato ball with sirloin beef that was our favorite of the bunch.

Our first main course was lamb. The shank was perfectly cooked with the flavorful meat falling off the bone. The lamb chop was cooked Chilean style, meaning that no matter how rare we ask for it, it still comes out well done. This is a cultural difference, but I can't help but wish I could find someone that knows how to cook meat to my liking in this country.

The next course was another rib, but unlike the dry style form the appetizer this one was glazed in a sticky reduction sauce that blended into the corn pudding to make an irresistible accompaniment.

The restaurant and Peruvian food in general tends more towards fish, but our love of hearty red wines led us more towards the meats.

The dessert was another sampling of flavors ranging from a sweet caramel sauce in a shot glass to a rice pudding. A delectable variety of sticky sweetness.

The service was excellent, especially the wine staff who didn't blink at our request to hold our own little tasting. They accommodated or need for multiple glasses with a fine variety of shapes to keep the wines straight and were more than happy to share their passion and expertise with us.

The evening was a great success with the only real shock of the evening being the final bill. The US dollar is once again doing well so try as we may we were not able to spend more than $300 for two of us, even after four bottles of wine.

Astrid & Gaston is a must visit for anyone in Santiago. Expect an evening of exploration and pampering as you work your way through the intriguing menu and wine list. And say hello to everyone for us.

Chile: A Dichotomy of Practices

Last week I visited four wineries with four very different points of view. A bulk producer in search of a newfound quality identity, a modern winery with an eye on tourism and two giants that have recently merged to create a monolithic presence.

J. Bouchon situated in Mingre in the Maule Valley is an old style hacienda with a suitable rustic looking winery to match their style. The facilities sport epoxy lined cement tanks in a white washed room, kept cool by the meter thick walls. This is all a facade of sorts as there is a modern production area situated just feet away.

Bouchon's history is that of a producer of indifferent and bulk wines. A history they are working hard to rewrite. Their top tier wines are terroir driven with a clear sense of identity from the vineyard. They are helped along this path by consultant Patrick Valette who until recently was the owner of Chateau Pavie in Saint Emilion.

In a rugged landscape of steep washes they carefully apply modern vineyard management in stark contrast to their bucolic setting. The results are good and improving. Expect to see their very best wines appear on the US shores with world class quality and pricing.

Casas del Bosque is well aware that their location in the Casablanca Valley, just an hour from the bustling metropolis of the capital city of Santiago affords them great opportunities for tourism. From their ample parking for busses and cars, to their very fine restaurant and meeting facilities, they are well prepared for visitors.

Even their barrel room is a show piece, designed to delight the tourist, while a few steps away beyond the ornate doors the real business of wine, with all of its unglamorous mess takes place. The wines too are designed to be crowd pleasers, and they hit their mark on all accounts.

The vines here are planted on their native roots, a testament not only to the lack of phylloxera in Chile, but to the mindset that ignores any possible benefits that root stock my give. Similarly the well manicured rows of vines seem to be planted more for ease of maintenance than with the heat of the sun in mind.

The wines are none the less fresh and modern, although the team seems to be struggling to find their ideal style. Experiments with oak aging may be going too far as one of the best wines I tasted was still in barrel and ready to be bottled, but the plans are to leave it for some time more.

Vina Tarapaca is in a world apart from the other properties of the Maipo Valley, literally. You enter the property by passing through a hidden gate far on a hill top, only to then drive miles through their vast vineyards down to their own little town and production facility. Everything they need from worker housing to carriage houses are sequestered in their private little valley.

The mansion that serves as the guest house rivals anything I have seen the world over. The grounds are replete with a pool, tennis court a four hole golf course and even a private landing strip for visiting dignitaries. Every weekend is booked for weddings and events and it is no wonder given the fairy tale elegance of the grounds.

A huge producer of a wide variety of wines, they still managed to impress me with quality even at the lower ends. The highest end push the price envelope for Chilean wines, but given their complexity and rich style, do so deservedly.

Vina San Pedro dwarfs them all. This 140 year old producer in the Curico Valley is large enough to have recently swallowed up Vina Tarapaca, creating the second largest wine property in Chile. The scale of San Pedro is evident in the 3000 acre vineyard that surrounds the winery. While this is one of the largest single vineyard plots I have ever seen, it is only about 1/3 of their total acreage.

Realizing the importance of keeping their high end wine making separate from their bulk efforts, San Pedro recently added individual wine makers to each facet of their operation. No longer does one person have to oversee everything from their gargantuan GatoNegro line to their very limited premium wines.

The vineyards too reflect the many styles the wines encompasses. On one end we find very old dry harvested vines with their gnarly twisted trunks while at the other end of the property is a text book operation of precision agriculture that embraces satellite maps and organic teas for irrigation.

All of the wineries I have seen so far have in common their desire to produce the best possible wines they can. They are all aware that in the past the wines of Chile may not have lived up to their potential and each property is doing what they feel is important to correct that.

Differing scales and approaches dictate what effort each producer concentrates on, but they all have the same goal in mind, and from what I have seen, they are all on their own tracks towards producing wines they may be proud of.

Chile: Mountains of Wines

I have been in Chile for more than a week now, and I have visited four wineries and seen five of the nine main wine producing regions and tasted around 50 wines . I am far from finished with my exploration, and I will be posting about the specific wineries in the days to come.

My first impression of the Chilean wine scene is that it is in a state of flux. Years of making big, rather indifferent wines has given way to a newfound search for the holy grail of modern wine, fruit.

The warm weather, mitigated by cooling breezes form the nearby Andes and Pacific Ocean translates to highly alcoholic wines with a tendency not to ripen well. The move to cooler regions and better vineyard practices is rapidly changing the wines that Chile is producing.

Almost everyone we have talked to has voiced their desire to express more of the grape in their wines. This is a trend that I applaud and that will make the wines of Chile that much more sought after on the world stage.

Carmenere is ubiquitous here. This grape, thought for so long to be Merlot, hails form the Bordeaux region of France, where it has long all but disappeared. In Chile it ranges from a rather indifferent red wine full of green pepper flavors, to a powerhouse of rich notes, but often lacking in complexity.

The desire to create a unique identity for the wines of Chile has led many to embrace and improve the Carmenere wines and from what I have tasted they may be on the right track, but the battle is not over yet. The propensity of the grape to produce an overwhelmingly green flavor is a strike against it, but when dealt with skillfully I was more impressed with the results.

Cabernet Sauvignon reigns here, as it seems to almost everywhere. The Cabs of Chile tend towards the softer, more drinkable side. This is all the more appropriate when you consider the low prices that the market allows for these wines. The $3 to $8 range is well populated and the quality in this value niche is much higher than in other parts of the world.

The high end is not completely devoid of players. Most of the wineries we have visited are producing a super blend that pushes the price envelope beyond $30. A price point that keeps the wines off the shelves here, but will be well received abroad. It may be a bit of an uphill struggle as the less expensive offerings have characterized the wines of Chile for most people.

I came here to find out if the wines from Chile are just well priced, or if there were gems that have yet to surface in the US market. With only 10% of my trip behind me I have already discovered the wines I was looking for, and I fully expect to learn about many more in the weeks to come.

Chile: A Glimpse

I have only been in Chile for a few days, but my first impression is of a wine rich culture. Akarana, the restaurant I went to for New Years Eve had a fabulous wine list at very reasonable prices. The local grocery store has a decent selection of affordable wines, and even our hotel room had a bottle to try.

When one thinks of Chile, at least from afar, they think of Cabernet and Merlot, usually well priced but with moderate expectations. Those who know their wine might also expect to see the intriguing Carmenere grape well represented. Certainly all that has been my experience, but it is only the beginning.

I have also had a very good Pinot Noir and a late harvest wine made from Muscat and another from Sauvignon Blanc. Clearly Chile is a wine producer with much greater range than it appears from outside.

That is exactly why I am here. To learn for myself what the true Chilean wine scene is about, and of course to report it all back to you. My mission even has the catchy name of the Andean Wine Crusade, replete with logo and a great deal of press.

I will have the opportunity to visit many wineries and regions in the country, and I am greatly looking forward to it. If what you know about Chilean wine comes from the selection at your local store, be prepared to discover a new truth, right along with me.

It may take years before the greater variety of wines from Chile find their way to the US and other shores, but their high quality and low prices make it likely to happen. Countless others have gone before me, but my turn has come to explore the wine diversity of this southern vinous giant, and I am looking forward to being able to disclose what I find.