Food & Entertaining - Wine & Spirits

Wine & spirits: Chilean wines

By: Konrad Ejbich

Chile's hot! With their great value and taste, Chilean wines are sure winners.

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This story was originally titled "Wine & spirits" in the January 2008 issue. Subscribe to Style at Home today and never miss an issue!

Everyone likes a bargain, and I'm no exception. That's why a large chunk of my wine budget is spent on bottles from Chile. Few people think of the country as one of the world's great wine producers. That's partly because it's not a nation of wine drinkers. With no local consumption, virtually every bottle of quality wine is exported.

To better understand Chile, imagine a shoelace with a knot tied in the middle. Dangle it by one end and you have a "satellite view" of the entire country, which runs down the western length of South America. The country is more than 4,300 kilometres long from north to south, with a width of only 180 kilometres near the centre. The knot in the shoelace represents the small zone where grapes can be cultivated. The soil there is extremely poor -- but perfect for grapevines -- and the long, hot, dry days and cool, breezy nights deliver ideal conditions for growing healthy fruit. This central region is isolated from the rest of the world -- by the Andes to the east, a barren desert to the north, the vast Pacific Ocean to the west, and massive glaciers (and Antarctica) to the south -- a fact that has protected the industry from most vine diseases and pestilence that plague winemakers elsewhere.

Chile has produced great-value wines for decades. Longtime aficionados may remember buying one-litre bottles of Tocornal for under $4 and Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon for around $5 in the early 1980s. Back then, those brands marked the highest level of Chilean winemaking. Today, they're better made but occupy a lower rung on the country's new quality ladder.

Popular offerings like Santa Rita "120" Cabernet Sauvignon, San Pedro Gato Negro and Santa Carolina Chardonnay provide outstanding value for under $10 (prices may vary in local markets). Chile's everyday reds are packed with freshly crushed blackcurrant, blueberry and wild black raspberry flavours, while the whites are ripe yet crisp. Here's an insider's tip: as you climb into slightly higher price brackets, you'll find even better bargains. In fact, expensive wines overdeliver like a federal minority government. You're buying more concentration, richness, elegance and charm, and better value than wines in the same price range from France, Italy or California.

More on Chilean wines on the next page >>