by Giles Cadman
Wine lovers are always interested in emerging wine regions and wineries from within them. Chile has leading producers calling for promotion of diversity.
A diversity of varieties, styles and soils are Chile’s greatest asset, but it must work harder to relay that message to consumers, according to leading producers.
“The future of Chile depends on being able to communicate to the customer the fact that we do not only offer good value or affordable wines,” said Ricardo Baettig, winemaker director at Morandé.
“The Chilean industry needs to focus on quality wines, and for that we need people thinking in the long-term. Chile is much more than good value wines or a bunch of icon wines, but it must be proved,” he told Harpers. Baettig added that Chile “must increase its diversity in terms of varietals” and continue to study specialised areas to determine which soil, climate and clones create the best quality wines.
Chile has successfully established “a clear New World identity”, according to Justin Knock, winemaking consultant at bottling specialist Cobevco, “however, the landscape does need more diversity from a style and scale point of view”.
“We are only just beginning to see the devolution of talented winemakers from the larger wineries into their own projects, something which has driven innovation in Australia, South Africa and California over the past two decades,” he said.
I am not so sure this is the best approach. Promotion of diversity may work, but producing wine with consistent quality that consumers find easy to purchase and want to repurchase is likely to sell more wine.
