Wine Focus for January 2017: Wines of Chile

[Robin Garr]

Your comment about "californicated" raises a question that I don't think we really know the answer to: what does Chilean* wine taste like?

*Chile is too broad for a one taste answer. I know I am not familiar enough with various Chilean terroir to answer.

True that, but over the years I've been watching Chilean wine (at least on occasion), I've seen what appears to me to be a broad move from a "Bordeaux" style in the early '80s to, first in the '90s, maybe, something to compete with the low end "fighting varietals," and then toward Californicated/spoofulated/Parkerized/Specked in a great deal of the wines, in both instances seemingly aimed at building a North American audience. I haven't had enough to speak knowledgeably about regional terroir, either, but I have seem that familiar move toward higher alcohol, riper fruit, often accentuated oak - you know the drill. a different thing than terroir but with a tendency to obscure terroir.

[Jenise]

Interesting question, David. And I know you didn't direct it at me, but I'd like to share my thoughts after ten days in Costa Rica last year, wherein we drank only Chilean and Argentinian wines, many by the glass with multiple glasses at most meals and multiple bottles with friends, so maybe we tasted 30-40 wines in all. We really noticed a difference, and hadn't expected to. The Argentines were mostly more robust and tended to have assertively toasted oak, where the Chileans were more subdued--less obvious oak and occasionally almost French levels of complexity and restraint. Hands down, we preferred the Chileans. It made me appreciate that the Chilean wine scene has advanced a lot since I travelled there in the mid 90's, and that I've unfairly held perhaps a few grudges that no longer apply.

But I'm not sure if there is otherwise a taste of Chile though there has been a characteristic skunky weirdness to me in nearly every Chilean pinot I've had. At Bill's blind tasting lunches, So American wines appear rarely but when they do, we usually end up on the fence about whether they're new world or old world, and once we decide New World we usually rule out North America almost instantly and head to the other hemisphere where Australia is the most easily identifiable.

[David M. Bueker]

Interesting that you bring up Argentina, as during out trip there in 2010 we drank almost exclusively Patagonian wines with much less oak and moderate ripeness/alcohol levels.

[Jenise]

Maybe we should all go to Costa Rica and test this together. Today I was reminded that I have friends there; I received this message on Facebook today:

"Janice how are you ? I'm so happy to hear from you. I do really hope you and Bob are doing fine. Thanks Janice for your nice and kind words. I can have good feelings and values and also I can be good looking man but not a rich one, not yet , maybe pretty soon. Thank GOD , I have reached many of my goals. Anyway thanks again, it was great to hear from you. Please come to CR soon, you and Bob are always welcome in our country and hearts."

And the seafood's to die for.