Article from Opimian Cellar 312 – Chile, Argentina, Alsace and Languedoc
While the wine history of Chile dates back to the 1600s and the arrival of the first Europeans, it was not until the latter part of the 20th century that it made its debut on the international wine stage. With only a dozen or so wineries in 1995, that number grew by more than fivefold just a decade later. Chile first earned its reputation as a source of valuable, reliable varietal wines, and its quality credentials were recognized at the 2004 Berlin tasting. Sena, a joint-project wine by Eduardo Chadwick and Robert Mondavi, more than held its own against a flight of top international wines. Today, Chile offers a full spectrum of wines and is rightly recognized as a source of wines from largely ungrafted vines. Phylloxera has not managed to gain a foothhold here, and it’s a new home to the Carménère grape, a Bordeaux expat and a minor player there, which has not really flourished on any significant scale anywhere else in the world