Wines of South America: The Essential Guide

WINES OF SOUTH AMERICA

THE PUBLISHER GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF THE GENERAL ENDOWMENT FUND OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS FOUNDATION.

WINES OF SOUTH AMERICA

The Essential Guide

Evan Goldstein

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University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2014 by Evan Goldstein

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goldstein, Evan.

Wines of South America : the essential guide / Evan Goldstein.

pages    cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-27393-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-520-95875-3 (e-book)

1. Wine and wine making—South America.    2. Viticulture—South America.    3. Wine industry—South America.    I. Title.

TP559.s63g65    2014

663’.20968—dc23

2013047383

Manufactured in the United States of America

23  22  21  20  19  18  17  16  15  14

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 2002) (Permanence of Paper).

CONTENTS

List of Maps

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Vinos and Vinhas of South America

1.Overview

2.Grape Varieties

3.Argentina

4.Chile

5.Brazil

6.Uruguay

7.Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela

Touring South American Wine Country

Dining South American Style

Super South American Selections

Decoding South American Wine Labels

Sources

Index

MAPS

1.South American wine-producing countries

2.Argentina’s wine regions

3.Argentina: The northern region

4.Argentina: Cuyo

5.Argentina: Patagonia

6.Chile’s wine regions

7.Chile: The Central Valley

8.Brazil’s wine regions

9.Uruguay’s wine regions

10.Wine regions of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The scope and diversity of those who contributed to make this book happen mirror the complexity and range of South America’s wine regions. Reference books, by definition, require researching vast amounts of information, ensuring its accuracy, and tracking down minutiae. All of this requires asking favors of your friends, who in turn ask favors of their friends. So muchisimas gracias and obrigadissimo to

Barbara Pino, Elena Goldstein, and Adam Goldstein for their love, support, and empathy when I headed south of the equator for weeks on end

Connie Shih Cohn, my invaluable right hand, for her patience, persistence, and constant refusal to take no for an answer when it would have been far easier to throw in the towel

My business partner, Limeng Stroh, and our Full Circle team for rejigging their day jobs to allow me to take on this project

The amazing equipo at the University of California Press, including Blake Edgar and Dore Brown, for taking a chance on this book and then treating it so lovingly

Erika Bűky for her fastidious editing skill, which still preserved my voice

Anne Canright, proofreader nonpareil, for dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, and adding the accents

Lohnes + Wright for the captivating cartography

All of the gifted photographers, including Mariano Herrera, Laura Mariategui, Camilo Quintana, Lilo Methfessel, Mario Vingerhoets, and especially Matt Wilson, the man, whose beautiful shots bring the countries to life

Jaime Draeger for her awesome transcription skills and great sense of humor

I am also grateful for the invaluable assistance of

Team Argentina: Raquel Correa, Laura Catena, Nora Favelukes, Mario Giordano, Victor Honoré, María Laura Ortiz, Magdalena Pesce, Andres Rosberg, and José Saballe

Team Brazil: Leocir Bottega, Gabriela Mott, Josimar Pedron, Pablo Onzi Perini, Flavio Pizzato, Bárbara Ruppel, João Carlos Taffarel, Jorge Tonietto, and Mauro Zanus

Team Chile: Fred Dexheimer, Ricardo Grellet, Derek Mossman Knapp, Aurelio Montes, Jake Pippin, Allyson Silva, and Lori Tieszen

Team Uruguay: Nicolas Bonino, Fabiana Bracco, Francisco Carrau, Pablo Fallabrino, and Gustavo Magariños

And to

Embedded emissaries Gregg Smith and Soledad Marroquin Muñoz (Peru), Sergio Prudencio (Bolivia), Dick Handal and Pablo Tamarelli (Ecuador), Gabriela Fines Ibarra (Paraguay), Jean Louis de Bedout (Colombia), and Leo d’Addazio (Venezuela)

Finally, I extend my gratitude to the countless winemakers and the helpful and endlessly generous teams at all the bodegas and adegas I visited for sharing stories, meals, laughter, and, of course, their delicious wines.

INTRODUCTION

The Vinos and Vinhas of South America

According to an old South American story, when God finished creating the earth, the angels in charge of shaping the land came to him and said: We’ve got a lot of mountains, valleys, and rivers left over; what should we do with them? God answered, Dump them at the end of the earth. And that, fortuitously for grape growers and winemakers, is how Chile and Argentina were created.

My first encounter with South American wine was a revelation. On an October day in the mid-1980s, while I was working at my family’s San Francisco restaurant, Square One, a friendly and passionate wine importer named Alfredo Bartholomaus came in. He was the founder of Billington Imports (then an independent company), and he had brought a few bottles of Chilean wine made by Cousiño Macul, one of Chile’s oldest family wine companies. Having never tasted any South American wines, I stopped by his table and listened with a combination of curiosity and reticence as Alfredo shared his enthusiasm for Chile and its wines and invited me to sample the range he had brought with him. I was mightily impressed, if not totally surprised, and the tasting opened my eyes (and palate) to South American wines. I have never looked back.

I had been to South America once in the early eighties, but only to visit Brazil’s big cities and beaches. On that trip, I hadn’t tasted any local licensed beverages except beer and cachaça (a spirit distilled from sugarcane juice). Wine was not popular or readily available. Even today, beer (from every country), rum (from Venezuela or Brazil), and brandy (notably the celebrated piscos of Chile and Peru and the singani of Bolivia) are more popular than wine on most of the continent. Only Argentina and Uruguay are serious wine-drinking nations. This lack of an indigenous wine culture is part of the reason that winemakers began to look overseas for their market, starting a veritable northward invasion of South American wines. And when I say invasion, I mean the good kind, like the British musical invasion of the 1960s—evocative and a great source of pleasure.

Today in many parts of the United States, a casual stroll down the wine aisles of a local store or supermarket reveals an array of wines from Chile and Argentina. Argentina is now the hottest South American wine producer and the third largest exporter to the United States, trailing only Italy and Australia. According to the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, Argentina’s 2013 bottled wine exports to the United States amounted to 7.2 million cases, worth $286 million, and grew a respectable 5.5 percent over the previous year.

Fifth among wine exporters to the United States, and only recently surpassed by Argentina, is Chile. According to the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), Chile is the world’s ninth-largest producer of wine. It exports 879 million liters a year, totaling $1.88 billion in 2013 and accounting for 70 percent of the country’s wine production. The United States is the second-largest market for Chilean wines after Europe, importing about $201 million worth.

In addition, vibrant wine industries exist in Brazil and in Uruguay, whose exports are increasingly becoming available to American consumers. Add to the mix some small but significant wine undertakings in Bolivia and Peru and a few in Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Venezuela, and you have a comprehensive, wide-ranging continental wine culture.

The arrival of these wines in the U.S. marketplace has been recent. My early encounter with Cousiño Macul’s wines was the start of a pioneering effort. Before then, the export markets were only a minor focus of South America’s producers. Today, political and economic changes have made some of the South American countries into global economic forces. In the wine industry, international investment and the advent of flying winemakers, as well as the development of local talent, have made South American producers a force to be reckoned with.

And yet, apart from a few sources of information on the wines, grapes, and vines of individual countries, there has been no up-to-date, comprehensive reference work on South American wine. Until now. I decided to write this book to fill this niche and to introduce more of the world’s appreciative wine drinkers to the pleasures of South American wines. The October 2013 issue of Decanter magazine, with a focus on South America, observed that no region has progressed so far or as fast in the past 10 years, and I concur.

We start out with an introduction to South America, take a look at the arrival of the vine and wine culture, review the range of grapes planted and cultivated, and summarize the developments leading to the current approaches in viticulture and winemaking. Separate chapters are devoted to the two wine-producing giants of the continent, Argentina and Chile, examining their unique histories, wine regions, wine styles, and outstanding grape varieties, with leading producers listed for the various regions. The evolving wine industries of Brazil and Uruguay receive similar treatment. Another chapter summarizes current winemaking in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. Each chapter includes maps, statistics, and profiles of key individuals in the wine industry; it ends with a listing of notable wineries. Then we step back to a broader view once more, taking a look at food and wine culture in South America, particularly in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay. Another chapter offers practical advice for touring the wine regions of South America and their numerous bodegas and adegas, the respective Spanish and Portuguese terms for wineries. Finally, I offer a collection of top ten (or sometimes twenty) lists of recommended wines in specific and quirky categories and some suggested reading for South American wine pilgrims.

I’m a tour guide with opinions. On several visits to South America, I have done the heavy lifting and have selected from among the thousand-plus South American wineries those that I feel are consistent, noteworthy, or particularly promising. But in this book I do not play the role of wine critic. I don’t give scores or ranks for wine. If a wine or a winery is included in this book, it is because I believe it to be contextually representative and meriting recognition.

I approached this project with some reservations. Until now, I have tried to write books that, like a fine wine, will age gracefully. Writing a wine guide is different. The wine world does not stand still: laws are modified, winemakers move on, wineries are sold or closed, great vintages sell out. For someone who loves precision, this reality is frustrating, because it makes complete accuracy impossible. In my previous books, I never discussed vintages (what do you do when you can’t get the 2009 anymore?) or ephemeral details like annual sales and production volumes. This time, I have had to let go and acknowledge that some of the things I write about are moving targets. I hope you can accept, as I have done, the fact that the perpetual changes in the world of wine are what make it endlessly interesting as well as occasionally challenging to grapple with.

This book is intended to be an essential work, but it is by no means the last, definitive word on South American wine. So if there’s a bottle you love or a winery you adore that isn’t mentioned in the pages that follow, don’t rise up in frustration; instead read on, discover more, and enjoy. ¡Salud!

Map 1. South American wine-producing countries

1

OVERVIEW

Vineyards in front of the White Mountain (Cerro Blanco) in the Zonda Valley, San Juan, Argentina. Photo by Laura Mariategui.

If some higher being were to tell me my years with Old World wine had to end, it would be to South America that I would turn.

Steven Spurrier

By any metric, South America is a significant contributor to the global wine market. Although only the world’s fourth-largest continent, South America is the second most important wine-producing continent, after Europe. It embodies a number of geographic and climatic extremes, including the world’s highest waterfall (Angel Falls in Venezuela), the largest river by volume (the Amazon), the longest mountain range (the Andes), and the driest place on earth (the Atacama Desert in Chile). This diverse continent is also home to an amazing range of quality wines. A December 2012 Gallup poll cited seven of the world’s ten most upbeat countries as being in Latin America, and wine surely plays a role in creating that outlook!

For Northern Hemisphere wine lovers, South America challenges some common assumptions. For one thing, southern seasons are reversed, with the autumn and grape harvests arriving in the first half of the calendar year. In the north, we think of grapes typically being grown in a geographic band between 30 and 50 degrees latitude. Within this range, the climate offers sufficient overall warmth for wine grapes to ripen properly. At higher latitudes, the climate is too cold to ripen grapes reliably, and at lower latitudes (closer to the equator) the climate is too warm and often too humid. In the Southern Hemisphere, the same general principle applies. Here most grapes are cultivated between 23 and 45 degrees latitude. But in South America, viticulture extends far up on the slopes and highlands of the vast Andes mountain range, where the cooling effects of high altitude and the more intense solar radiation create unique growing conditions. And nearer the equator, some growers are taking advantage of the year-round warm climate to experiment with vines that produce harvests twice a year and in some locations, even three.

THE HISTORY OF WINE IN SOUTH AMERICA

Wine grapes are not native to South America, but they arrived as an essential adjunct to European settlement. After Christopher Columbus explored the northern coastline of South America in 1498, word of his discovery spread. From the early sixteenth century onward, European voyages and their accompanying migrations of European settlers led to the substantial exchange of animals and plants between the two continents. It was the Spanish conquistadores, who arrived in South America by way of Mexico, that gave birth to South American wine culture.

Although there is anecdotal evidence of indigenous grapes in Aztec civilization, the documented cultivation of wine in South America began during the time of the conquistadores. Led by Francisco Pizarro, they arrived in the sixteenth century, intent on finding treasure and conquering the Inca Empire, whose territory encompassed modern Peru, Bolivia, northern Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador. Between 1531 and 1534 the Incas were overmatched by Spanish weapons and military tactics, and the victors settled in. As they colonized the region, they planted vines from the seed that they brought with them, from grape varieties that we refer to today as criollas. They depended, however, on local technology: it was the irrigation engineering of the Inca emperor Pachacutec, the builder of Machu Picchu, that enabled the first vineyards to be planted south of Lima in 1548. As the conquistadores ventured farther south and east, grape growing and winemaking spread into Chile and northern Argentina.

Pedro de Valdivia, one of Pizarro’s most trusted officers, settled Santiago (in 1541), La Serena (1544), and Concepción (1550). As he moved south, he was met with brave resistance by the native Mapuche, who ultimately killed him before he could cross the Bío-Bío River. He left a legacy of large-scale viticulture. By the late sixteenth century, Chile had widespread vineyards, producing wines from criolla varieties such as Pais (Criolla Chica), Muscatel (Muscat), Torontel (also known as Torrontés Riojano), Albihio (Albilla), and Mollar. Viticulture continued to expand in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the time Chile declared independence in 1810, wine was culturally ingrained, especially around the silver mines of La Serena, where the miners were notorious for their insatiable thirst.

Early Spanish missionaries also cultivated grapes. A Jesuit priest, Francisco de Carabantes, is credited with introducing the first grapes, likely Pais, to the region that is now Chile in 1548. In 1556, Juan Cedrón, a Spanish missionary, made the trek from La Serena over the Andes to Santiago del Estero in northern Argentina, carrying cotton seed, grain, and vine cuttings, and so became Argentina’s first winemaker. As in Chile, the first grape planted was likely Pais, possibly along with other criolla varieties. Adapting Inca irrigation methods, the local Huarpe tribes had harnessed the Mendoza, Tunuyán, Atuel, and Diamante rivers, allowing for the agricultural cultivation of the surrounding Mendoza region. Records attest that vines were well established in Mendoza by the sixteenth century, and while wines were made for local consumption, word spread as far as Buenos Aires that Mendocino wines were very good. Eighteenth-century records attest to a commercial wine trade with Buenos Aires.

Jancis Robinson, in her celebrated Oxford Companion to Wine, observes that the traditional explanation for rapid expansion of viticulture was that the Catholic conquerors required a ready supply of sacramental wine, and that missionaries therefore played a central role in establishing vineyards. She notes, however, that there is little evidence to support this view and that most of the early vineyards and winemaking attempts were secular. She also points out that the economic dynamics, including the cost of importing wine and the difficulties of transporting it over land, resulted in the early Spanish conquerors’ realizing that they would need to establish local vineyards if they were to continue to enjoy their wine.

All these efforts came to the notice of the imperial powers in Spain. To protect domestic wine producers and merchants, the Spanish restricted wine production in their New World possessions, effectively freezing any further secular development of viticulture in Mexico. This move inadvertently provided an incentive to Peruvian producers, who soon became the dominant wine suppliers to most of South America. By the seventeenth century, Jesuit missions along the coastal valleys of Peru had become the most important centers of viticulture in South America and remained so until other regions developed their own industries.

The arrival of grapes in Brazil was slightly more recent. Brazil was claimed by Portugal in April 1500 with the arrival of a Portuguese armada of thirteen ships and more than one thousand men, commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral. He disembarked at what is known today as Porto Seguro in northeastern Brazil. In 1532, the first vines were planted by Martim Afonso de Sousa, in São Vicente in the southeast, but they did not thrive. He had greater success in 1551 in Tatuapé, São Paulo. When the Jesuits arrived in southern Brazil in the 1620s, Roque González de Santa Cruz, with the labor of the native Guarani community, expanded and maintained the vineyards in Rio Grande do Sul.

The history of winemaking farther south, in Uruguay, is more obscure. Although there are local records documenting that Spanish settlers brought the first grapevines to Uruguay during the colonial period, there are no further references to viticulture in the region until the end of the nineteenth century.

In the north and east, viticulture was introduced to Venezuela in the 1520s by the Spaniards in the cities of Coro (the capital of the state of Falcón and the oldest city in western Venezuela) and Cumaná (the capital of the state of Sucre, east of Caracas). Wine production in Bolivia was introduced by the Spanish and Portuguese in the late fifteenth century, with the first vines being planted in Mizque, in the department of Cochabamba, and later extending to Camargo in Chuquisaca. In 1584, grape production finally arrived in Tarija, currently the largest grape-producing region in Bolivia. I could find no definitive written history for viticulture in either Colombia or Ecuador, but presumably their plantings of vines have similar origins.

MODERN LOVE

The modern evolution and reshaping of wine culture among the continent’s big four producers (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay) are intriguing stories. As in Spain before the Franco era, the wine producers of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay focused on their domestic markets. In Chile and Argentina, this was in part a result of social and political factors that contributed to closed markets until the 1990s. But with a sharp decline in the regional consumption of wine and the formation in 1991 of the Mercosur free-trade association and its subsequent strategic wine plan, growers across the continent were forced to expand their view to include international markets and to redefine their quality standards.

Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay had very healthy per capita wine-consumption figures going into the 1980s. The average Argentinean consumed more than 90 liters of wine every year, Chileans were drinking 55 liters apiece, and Uruguay’s population enjoyed a healthy 33-plus liters. By the late 1980s those numbers had plummeted: Argentina was down to less than 50 liters per person, Chile to 25, and Uruguay to 30. Contemporary per capita consumption remains much lower than in the 1980s, at around 26 liters in Argentina, 17 liters in Chile, and 26 liters in Uruguay.

The reasons for this downward spiral included increasing consumption of other beverages (such as beer, spirits, and sodas); economic crises; and, in Argentina and Chile, government policies that did not favor wine producers. Draconian reforms of drinking and driving laws effectively restricted market growth. Faced with domestic markets that were no longer able or willing to gulp down all the wine that was being made, producers had to consider alternatives.

In Argentina, which even now exports less than 30 percent of its wines, these adjustments entailed changing wine styles to win over foreign palates while making the domestic market more sophisticated. Producers in Brazil and Uruguay did the same. In Chile, the need for change was more urgent, as 70 percent of the country’s wine was produced for overseas consumption and hence needed to be reshaped into export-friendly styles. In all four countries, much of this change was accomplished by varying the grape selections. However, in the end, all required outside help to revamp their wine industries.

Chile’s success as a modern wine exporter is widely credited to the arrival of Miguel Torres from Spain’s Penedès region. At the wish of his father (Miguel Torres Sr.), he explored Chile, accompanied by the Chilean enologist Alejandro Parot (a classmate at the University of Dijon). He was so impressed with the natural conditions that he discovered—a diversity of microclimates and a relative absence of vine diseases—that he purchased an old winery in Curicó in 1979, calling the area a viticultural paradise. Recognizing an immediate need to raise the game, he imported stainless steel tanks for temperature control and cold fermentations, oak barrels, and other equipment from Europe and went to work in the vineyards planting and caring for French varieties. He soon made an indelible mark on Chilean viticulture. Encouraged by his success and by government policies that were opening up the market, other European-sponsored enterprises soon followed, among them Los Vascos (a joint venture established by Chile’s Eyzaguirre family and the Rothschilds of Bordeaux), Hacienda Araucano (established by Bordeaux’s eminent Lurton family in 1988), and Lapostolle (the Chilean vision of the Marnier-Lapostolle and Rabat families). This enormous period of advancement is referred to as stage 1 by Rafael Guilisasti, vice chair of the board of the huge Concha y Toro wine company and a proprietor of Emiliana Vineyards. Stage 2, from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, was marked by a planting explosion that doubled the acreage under cultivation (from 134,400 acres to more than 270,000 acres) using better grape varieties and clonal selections. Also crucial to this expansion was the discovery of new growing areas, spearheaded by Pablo Morandé’s pioneering entry into Casablanca in 1982. This encouraged pushes by others into San Antonio, Elquí, and the cooler subregions of traditional areas such as Colchagua and Maipo. Subsequent advances in viticulture have been led by vineyard mavens such as the biodynamic guru Álvaro Espinoza and the terroir whisperer Pedro Parra. As a result of these developments, Chile is experiencing what we might call stage 3 in its progress toward a bright wine future.

On the other side of the Andes, the situation in the 1970s and early 1980s was equally bleak. Argentina’s military government had incurred large amounts of debt with botched projects, corrupt political dealings, the Falklands War, and the state’s expropriation of private entities. By the time democracy was restored in 1983, unemployment was skyrocketing, wages were plummeting, and inflation was on the rise. Argentina simply didn’t have the means or leadership to recover. In 1989, with a declining gross domestic product and inflation in excess of 5,000 percent, the economy collapsed. This collapse dramatically slowed wine consumption and led to a substantial government-subsidized pull-up of older vineyards. Sadly, this effort led to the destruction of much of the stock of old-vine Malbec, a loss from which the Argentinean wine industry has taken decades to recover.

The Catena family of Mendoza is correctly credited with helping to revive the industry. Nicolás, the patriarch of the clan, spent time at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late seventies. During numerous visits to the Robert Mondavi Winery, he shared quality time with the late Robert Mondavi and learned the growing and winemaking techniques of the Napa Valley. When he returned home to take over the family winery in the eighties, he was determined to build Mendoza into an internationally renowned wine region. He embarked on this effort with the assistance of the renowned wine-maker and consultant Paul Hobbs, a classmate of his brother Jorge at UC Davis. With Paul’s insistence and Nicolás’s persistence, things changed. They harvested smaller crops, restrained vineyard vigor, reduced and carefully timed vineyard irrigation, and implemented cleaner practices in the winery and the cellar. Hobbs became so enamored with the process that he put his money where his mouth was and started his own winery, Viña Cobos, with two Argentinean partners, Luis Barraud and Andrea Marchiori, in 1998. He continues to consult for a dozen or so Argentinean wineries and imports several lines into the United States.

While Nicolás Catena was getting his bearings in Mendoza, Arnaldo Etchart of the Salta region was determined to improve his red wines by tapping the skills of the Bordelais wine expert Michel Rolland. The impact of Rolland’s 1987 visit went beyond anyone’s expectations. Like Paul Hobbs, Rolland was inspired to invest heavily in Argentina. His projects range from San Pedro de Yacochuya, a Salteña project he runs with Arnaldo Etchart, to his game-changing Clos de los Siete project, involving several wineries in Mendoza. Together, Hobbs and Rolland, along with the Catenas and Etcharts, have led the regime change in Argentinean winemaking.

In Brazil and in Uruguay, the governments were among the principal players responsible for moving the industry beyond viño común, the common wines or table wines of the past, to the fine wines that are increasingly becoming renowned and opening the markets to export. Unlike Chile and Argentina, where vineyards are planted with a lot of traditional European wine grapes (species Vitis vinifera), Brazil and Uruguay are still planted predominantly with North American native (Vitis labrusca) and hybrid grapes. Introduced at the end of the nineteenth century, these varieties still account for over 70 percent of Brazil’s production and a similar percentage of Uruguay’s. In an effort to ameliorate quality and open the markets, both countries went through government-endorsed and partly government-subsidized reconversions, in which vineyards were dug up and replanted with different vines.

In Brazil, this reconversion was nominally voluntary, although in practice it was essentially forced upon the industry. Until the late 1960s, most of Brazil’s wine was common wine, produced by cooperatives. They used the American native and hybrid varieties, which were commercially popular for their ability to produce abundantly in Brazil’s climate and their multiple uses (juices, concentrate, jellies, etc.), and the only winemaking expertise was domestic. In the ensuing years, wine companies from France (Pernod, Moët & Chandon) and Italy (Martini and Rossi, Cinzano) entered the market and replanted vineyards with quality vinifera grapes. In the years that followed, the combination of a tough economy and political policies began to force the hand of the grape growers, making selling grapes to the co-ops less appealing. Some growers started to work with Brazilian wineries that were expanding and focusing on quality (such as Salton, Miolo, and Casa Valduga), while others decided to try producing their own wines. It was these independent growers and producers who took the first steps toward establishing a premium wine industry, even sending their children abroad to take enology courses. Led by visionaries such as Adriano Miolo, Lidio Carraro, and Flavio Pizzato, Brazil’s industry began to reinvent itself in the late 1990s and early 2000s and showed the potential to produce world-class wines. Though fine wines represent only a small portion of Brazil’s output, they are welcome entries on the world’s wine shelves and are becoming more widely available.

In Uruguay, although domestic wine consumption expanded from the 1950s until the late 1970s, it had dropped precipitously by the 1980s. Faced with a domestic decline in consumption as well as the prospect of the more open international market of the Mercosur, producers saw that they had two options: quit, and cede the market to competitors from Chile and Argentina, or else boost their quality and try to win back the domestic market. As in Brazil, this decision resulted in reconversion. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, almost all growers and wineries took advantage of government incentives to pull up inferior Vitis labrusca grapes and replant with Vitis vinifera. However, the benefits of these programs were limited because the government sponsored improvements for fruit only—not for rootstock replacements or any winery improvements. Nevertheless, the policy had a momentous effect on Uruguayan wine production. Led by the energetic and determined Reinaldo de Lucca, who went to Montpellier to study enology (and who today owns a bodega bearing his name), better grape clones, starting with Tannat (the signature grape of Uruguay), were brought over from France, quarantined, heat-treated against viruses, and planted. De Lucca still runs a nursery that promotes Uruguayan grape diversity, and he is the country’s leading importer of plant material.

Uruguayan winemaking entered a second phase of improvements as an increasing number of producers committed themselves to quality production, including Daniel Pisano, Francisco Carrau, and Fernando Deicas. Although there are fewer than two dozen wineries today that concentrate on exports, and perhaps twice that number focusing exclusively on vinifera-driven quality wines, the momentum is palpable.

Modern refinement of grape growing and winemaking in South America has followed a track parallel to that of other regions that emerged from introversion and obscurity: Spain, South Africa, Portugal, and even Australia in the era before Rosemount and Penfolds. The chapters that follow explore these developments in more depth.

2

GRAPE VARIETIES

Man harvesting grapes in a traditional straw hat (chupalla) at Luis Felipe Edwards winery in Colchagua, Chile. Photo by Matt Wilson.

Though we tend to assume that grape growing in South America is limited to a handful of varieties, the continent has a vast selection of grapes that reflects the diversity of its settlers and immigration patterns over several centuries. Official sources indicate commercial plantings of 165 different grapes in Argentina, 117 in Brazil, 65 in Uruguay, and over 60 in Chile.

The origins of these grapes can be traced to Europe: specific cultivars emanate from Spain (including the criolla family of grapes that were first brought over by the conquistadores and early explorers in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), Italy (especially varieties found in Argentina and Brazil), France (whose strong influence can be felt in Chile, which in turn shared it with Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay), and Portugal (mostly in Brazil). South America is also home to abundant quantities of native North American and North American hybrid grapes. These form the backbone of the Brazilian and Uruguayan table-wine industries and are also used for grape juices, jellies, jams, table grapes, raisins, and concentrates.

In addition to the producers mentioned below, further recommendations can be found in the individual country chapters and the top ten lists in the back of the book.

WHITE VARIETIES

CEREZA

CHARDONNAY

Grown in: Chile (26,770 acres), Argentina (almost 16,000 acres), Brazil (1,600 acres), and Uruguay (355 acres); small amounts are planted in Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Paraguay

Distinctive in: Argentina (Mendoza: Uco Valley), Chile (Aconcagua: Casablanca Valley, San Antonio Valley; Coquimbo: Elquí Valley, Limarí Valley; Southern Regions: Bío-Bío Valley, Malleco Valley), Brazil (Campanha Gaúcha; Serra Gaúcha: Pinto Bandeira, Vale dos Vinhedos; Serra