ALTITUDINAL ADJUSTMENTS
The valleys of Maipo, Colchagua and Aconcagua offer a valuable lesson in Chilean winemaking, as oenophile Gerrie Lim learns
It’s on a warm day in January 2019 that we start our journey in Puente Alto in Chile’s Maipo Valley, about an hour’s drive from the capital city of Santiago. Thanks to Angélica Valenzuela, Commercial Director of the Wines of Chile association, I’m discovering this South American country’s winemakers. Michel Friou, Head Winemaker at Almaviva, gives me my first lesson in Chilean winemaking.
“Chilean wines were considered more accessible because of the creaminess and the rounded tannins,” says the Frenchman, who arrived in Chile in 1995 and worked at other noted wineries, including the neighbouring Casa Lapostolle, before taking the helm at Almaviva in 2007. “Of course, we need to keep wines for the future to show the importance of bottle ageing, but the quality of the tannin is now better than before. We make better fresh wines today than 10 or 12 years ago.”
Founded in 1997 as a joint venture between Baron Philippe de Rothschild and Viña Concha y Toro in Chile, Almaviva launched its first vintage in 1998, which achieved international recognition for its top quality. It also has a second wine called Epu (meaning “two” in the indigenous Mapuche language), which it makes in small quantities – 4,000 cases – and is sold only in Chile, Brazil, Germany and Japan.
“Almaviva is 50 to 55 percent of the wine that we vinify here; 10 to 15 percent is for the second wine, and 25 percent is sold as bulk wine,” Friou informs me. “I’d say we have 70ha of wines planted, maximum, mostly cabernet sauvignon.” The wines also contain carménère, cabernet franc, merlot and petit verdot, planted on rocky soils consisting of loamy clay, sand and gravel; this alluvial soil allows for drainage and imparts minerality, giving Almaviva wines their extraordinary quality.
“But with irrigation,” he adds, “or else we cannot grow vines. Here in this area, we have an average annual rainfall of 300mm, which has been the case for the last 40 years; it has fallen to 200mm in the last six or seven years. This year, we have 160mm of rainfall so far, which is very little.” (For comparison, the average annual rainfall in a tropical country such as Singapore is about 2,400mm; the Medoc in France gets about 930mm.) He takes me to the barrel room and shows me the wines from 2017 “macerating for three or four weeks, and the free wine that will be separated and sent to barrel tomorrow”.
Our tasting is immaculate – Almaviva 1999, Almaviva 2009, Almaviva 2011, Almaviva 2015 (particularly wonderful, with a long 10-week harvest) and Almaviva 2016. Over lunch, we have the Almaviva 2010, which I had tried at a previous tasting. While this release suffered from the earthquake of February 27 that year, resulting in a reduced crop and a late ripening process, it is much more evolved now, and goes well with lovely slow-cooked beef rib with sweet potatoes, pumpkin and vegetables in Provençal style.
WINE CENTRAL
The next day sees us travelling 200km south of Santiago, to Colchagua Valley, where Casa Lapostolle looms alongside Clos Apalta. Diego Urra, Assistant Winemaker at Casa Lapostolle, greets us with more than a passing
nod; unlike Friou, who had lived in Sabah, Urra was more directly from our part of the world, having previously lived in Singapore (“You know what I miss most? The food. The chicken rice – so good!” he exclaims.).
Clos Apalta was previously under Casa Lapostolle, but has, in the past two years, grown independent, into a chateau with two wines: the flagship Clos Apalta and Le Petit Clos, a second wine only in its second vintage.
“Technically, you’ll find less oak in the Lapostolle portfolio, with more concentration and more exuberance,” Urra shares. “Clos Apalta was born in 1997, and the idea was very simple but challenging, working with gravity, so it’s a six-storey building that was mostly underground. Since we make Clos Apalta here, we receive mostly carménère, and there is some cabernet, merlot and petit verdot.”
There is a 100 percent chardonnay from Casa Lapostolle I like, but it’s Clos Apalta’s Le Petit Clos 2015 that really wows me. “Clos Apalta is very exuberant and it has carménère, but Le Petit Clos is more like a classic; it’s more cabernet,” he enthuses. “The percentages of cabernet and carménère are almost the same, but the ageing is different. There’s a little less oak influence in Le Petit Clos; you could say it’s a bit more edgy.”
The other property in Colchagua we visit is Viña Maquis, procured in 1916 by the great-grandfather of Ricardo Rivadeneira, who has been its managing director since 2000. “The Maquis estate is a place where two rivers meet,” he says. “These rivers have a huge impact on the characteristics of our wines, protecting us from frost damage, because frost can really kill the vines. The rivers also help lower the maximum temperature in summer, and impact the alluvial soil brought in from the Andes.”
“Whenever you dig very deep here, you always find gravel at some depth,” he adds, “which means our soils have great drainage. We have soil with a lot of clay, which is great for top-quality tannins and top-quality red wines. This combination of 2 to 3m of top soil with a lot of clay – many times more than the 40 percent clay in the ideal soil texture – over a thick layer of gravel with great drainage is something very unique to Maquis. I don’t know of any other vineyard in Chile with high clay over gravel and great drainage.”
I find myself impressed with several vintages of Maquis wines: Lien 2005 and 2008 (a blend comprising carménère and syrah), Viola 2013 (a carménère-cabernet franc-cabernet sauvignon blend) and Franco 2015 (mostly cabernet franc). “Our speciality is both cabernet franc and carménère,” Rivadeneira says. “The Viola 2013, for instance, scored 94 points in the October edition of The Wine Advocate and is the highest-rated carménère for that vintage.”
Viña Maquis chief winemaker Rodrigo Romero, though, doesn’t quite agree: “I like the Viola 2011 because I like the cool climate here in Maquis. Viola is a very important wine for us because it really shows how special this place is. The real character of carménère has flowery notes and you lose that if the grapes are overripe. You can taste the green pepper, with a roundness or fine tannins, and there’s a nice colour too.”
NORTHERN HIGHS
On our third day, we venture into Aconcagua Valley, 100km north of Santiago, to inspect the work of one man: Francisco Baettig, Head Winemaker of Sena, Errazuriz and Viñedo Chadwick. I first encountered his work in October 2011, while on the panel of a vertical tasting organised by Sena in Hong Kong, where six vintages of Sena were pitted against four wines from Bordeaux – the first five places were awarded to Sena (2008, 2001, 1995, 2007 and 1997).
Most recently, Baettig was named the 2018 Winemaker Of The Year in renowned British wine critic Tim Atkin’s 2018 Chile Special Report, which gave an overview of the Chilean wine scene. Atkin also gave 98 points to the Viñedo Chadwick 2015, 96 points to the Errazuriz Las Pizarras 2016 and 96 points to the Errazuriz Don Maximiano Founder’s Reserve 2015.
Errazuriz’s Kai 2016, one of the wines we try, scored 97 points from James Suckling, and Errazuriz’s winemaker Pedro Contreras, who leads the tasting in Baettig’s absence, shares that “the first fruit for Kai (which means “plant” in the Mapuche language) was 2005, normally 90 percent carménère and other varietals. The 2016 was 7 percent petit syrah, a good partner for the carménère and with good ageing potential.”
“Then we have a vertical of Don Maximiano Founder’s Reserve: 1989, 2007 and 2016,” he notes, pouring for us. “The 2007, a blend of 83 percent cabernet sauvignon, 10 percent cabernet franc and 7 percent petit verdot, has some balsamic notes and the wine is alive, sweeter and young. The 2010 is a ‘Parker style’ of Don Maximiano: big and muscular, sweet and round. In 2016, we moved on to something more balanced.”
In fact, when we arrive at Viñedo Chadwick ( located 650m above sea level in Puente Alto – right next to Almaviva, where we first started!), Magui Chadwick, daughter of the winery’s founder Eduardo Chadwick and its marketing manager, points out that “we are now going for a fresher style; we pick earlier in the season. And because of Parker’s influence, everybody started to do ‘Parker wines’ and now, we're coming back to our roots.”
“In 2016,” she shares, “we had a big rain on April 16 – 300mm! – but luckily, we had picked before that day. So the 2016 was very healthy, with good acidity and concentration.” James Sucking scored it 99 points, but added that it does need five to six years to soften, which I agree with – hence I much prefer the 2005, which we compared it with.
The 2016 Sena, on the other hand, is a breathtaking vintage (55 percent cabernet sauvignon, 20 percent malbec, 12 percent petit verdot, 8 percent carménère and 5 percent cabernet franc), from 240ha planted. In the words of Francisco Baettig, it is a “deep and beautiful ruby red, with a bright violet glimmer and elegant, fine-grained tannins. Fresh and juicy, and full of life.” Indeed, and brimming with spice too. You could very well take that as a summation of the wines of Chile – and a fresh invitation to reconsider the fine wines of the New World.