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Top 10 intriguing things about Chile and its wines
Chile and its wines
- Chile has 460 Years of Wine Heritage
- When the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century, there was no phylloxera
- Chilean vine rootstock (at the time) grew own-rooted, which turned out to be a valuable genetic material.
- This allowed Carmenere to thrive hidden among Merlot vines for over a century, even after its near extinction in France from phylloxera.
- Chile has llamas and ducks that roam vineyard rows, cleaning out intrusive weeds, while providing nitrogen to the soil.
- Chile is surrounded by four geographic barriers.
- North – Atacama Desert
- South – Patagonian ice fields
- East – Andes Mountains to the east
- West – Pacific Ocean
- It’s not the distance from the equator that is the dominant role in Chile, it’s its closeness to the Pacific Ocean or the Andes Mountains.
- Chile has much greater diversity in soils and climates from east to west, than it does from north to south.
- Geology:
- Soils are healthy and well-drained, with textures of loam, clay, sand, and silt
- Soils have a variety of origins. Examples are alluvial, colluvial, and fluvial
- Sustainability is far more than a catch phrase. It is also much broader than taking an ecologically sound approach to grape growing. It involves close attention to detail in each of the three components required for a healthy company: the environment, the people, and the economic bottom line. More about Chile on Wines of Chile.
