Many aspects of today’s wine picture puzzle me. I don’t understand why some Australian wines are so popular (don’t ask me for names, and I’ll tell you no tales). I don’t understand why rosé wines from many countries aren’t more popular. And I don’t understand why Chilean wines don’t have a bigger share of our market.
That’s not to say there isn’t a reasonable choice in the Chile section of the LCBO and Vintages. But Chile offers such good quality at fair prices across the board that I’d expect even more. It puzzles Chile’s wine producers, too, and they’re making concerted efforts to increase exports.
In Chile briefly last December, I visited a few wineries near Santiago. I wouldn’t want to generalize about Chile’s wine industry from a handful of wineries. About 200 are scattered throughout the narrow length of the country, and they’re as diverse as you’d expect: huge companies churning out millions of boxes and bottles for domestic consumption and export, and small boutique operations; new startups and upstarts, and companies that trace their roots back centuries.
Still, I was impressed by what they are achieving at all levels, from basic, everyday wine to the super-premiums. They’re conscious of their history and traditions (vines were planted in Chile in the mid-1500s, long before some of the most famous European wine regions) but not afraid to innovate.
One that especially impressed me is Cono Sur, a relatively new and small unit of the massive Concha y Toro company. Cono Sur cultivates 300 hectares of grapes by the “integrated management” method. This is virtually organic farming, where chemical pesticides and herbicides are reduced to a minimum or eliminated. In these vineyards, geese, grease, garlic, grass and bright flowers do the jobs that chemicals do elsewhere.
The more than 700 geese eat the burritos — not what you order at your area Mexican restaurant, but small insects that live in the soil and migrate up the vine trunks in spring. The burritos that survive the geese and climb the vines encounter a band of grease and garlic that’s enough to repel them and send them back to earth — where the geese get a second go.
As for grass, it’s used to deal with small red spiders that attack vine leaves. Grass is planted between every other row and inoculated with white spiders that prey on their red cousins. The flowers? They’re planted every five rows to attract the California prips, an insect that otherwise would attack vine flowers.
The only downside is the geese. Toward the end of summer, they forget their contract (eating burritos) and prefer a diet of sweet grapes. So, for the month before harvest, the geese are confined to a fenced area that includes the vineyard reservoir.
Chile’s climate and soil make organic viticulture easier than in many other parts of the world. The dry climate, for instance, makes mildew a rare problem. Still, not all vineyards are as environmentally friendly as Cono Sur’s and, to my mind, it’s an additional reason to support their wines.
Four Cono Sur wines today, all available from the LCBO. The two 1.5-litre bottles are excellent value for summer parties.