The many faces of Chilean wine will only leave you itching to return for more

Of the four professional wine trips I took this year, three were return voyages. I went back to the Alto Adige after an absence of six years, the Rhône Valley after nine, and the Western Cape of South Africa after 12. I learned new things and deepened my understanding of each by returning. The first trip I took this year, though, was new: Chile. As I wrote in The Hub, that was a van trip, where I visited as many wineries in as many wine regions as could be packed into the better part of a week. It was a fantastic introduction, but it only served to whet my appetite, and I left the long skinny country at the other end of the Americas wanting to know more. The opportunity to return manifested itself last week, when my wife, a couple who are good friends, and I spent a week’s holiday in Chile. There was no van, just a rental car to get us between the two cities of Santiago and Valparaiso. We spent all of our time exploring the two towns, except for a winery pit stop at Casas del Bosque in the Casablanca Valley that lies between them. If the press trip tour of Chile was about seeing where Chilean wines come from and meeting the people who make them, then this holiday trip was about seeing the wines in their natural habitat. We wanted to see how Chilenos enjoy their wines (or at least I did). So we walked the streets, sat at the tables, and tried as many Chilean wines as we could (responsibly, of course). Our foursome has traveled together before, including a trip we did last year to Buenos Aires (which formed the basis of this piece in The Hub). We have a system: pick a neighbourhood to explore during the day, and take our chances finding a spot for lunch, then book a spot for dinner. There’s often a bit of a HiLo between a casual lunch and a fancier dinner. Before my first trip to Chile, I didn’t know much (anything) about Chilean food. I might have got a hint if I had looked at a map of the country’s 6,453-kilometre-long Pacific coastline. Chile is a paradise of very fresh seafood that’s served raw as Nikkei-style sushi, acidulated as ceviche, or cooked in all manner of ways, including chupe or pastel de jaiba: stew or pie of crab, baked in a gratin of cream. So, between casual lunches, formal dinners, and ordering as much seafood as four maritime-challenged Upper Canadians could manage, I think we got a pretty good survey of the wine lists of Santiago and Valparaiso. And what I can report back on is the incredible lightness of Chilean wine. Delicate and fresh wines, red and white, were there when we needed them. Of course, there were always big Cabernet Sauvignon and Carménère red wines when required (I had a digestion-aiding glass of Cab at lunch one day when faced with a giant pork lomito sandwich). But there were also always crisp Sauvignon Blanc or fresh Chardonnay. The whites came mostly from the nearby Leyda and Casablanca valleys, or further north from Limari. All three regions are considered cool Chilean climates because of their proximity to the Pacific Ocean, which runs very cold there from the Humboldt Current. It’s the light reds of Chile that really taught me a lesson on this trip. I had some exposure to them in January, especially at Leonardo Erazo’s winery in the Itata Valley, about five hours south of Santiago. But I didn’t know if these wines were a boutique specialty for export, or shown to my press group as a token alternative to the big production wines that dominate exports. They’re neither, and everything from sandwich shops in Santiago and tourist traps in Valparaiso are listing the new face of Chilean red wines. Or is it the old face of Chilean wine? At fancy restaurants, like Boncanáriz and Ambrosia in Santiago or La Caperucita y el Lobo in Valparaiso, we had no trouble finding light, red fruit-flavoured reds. They’re often made from old vines of Paìs (aka Mission) or Cinsault, and they come from valleys to the south: Maule, Itata, or Bio Bio. More and more of these wines are finding their way north to Canada. Look for them in the boutique section of wine retailers. Is it better to climb one mountain twice than two mountains? I don’t know. I do know that my second ascension to Chile just made me want to go back.