Word: chileanizing
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...matron--and the face on the label--of the three-year-old Santa Laura winery in Chile's Colchagua Valley. The vineyard's Cabernet Sauvignons are full of lavish spice and berry flavors, with pleasant touches of vanilla and chocolate, all for just $10 a bottle. Chilean wines like Hartwig's are in demand at Wine Brats, a Gen-X club in Santa Rosa, Calif. "If we think the best wine is even $5, we'll buy it," says Joel Quigley, the club's head. "The Chileans are giving us the kind of price-quality ratio we're looking...
...wines from Chile--whose climate, soil and cheap labor are a viticulturist's paradise--are finally adding vintage to value, in the way that California wines did two decades ago. Chilean Cabernets, especially, are "softer than California and yet more accessible than Bordeaux," says Wine Spectator senior editor Thomas Matthews. "If this keeps up, Chile could be, sooner than many expected, something more than a perennial wine bridesmaid." Even British wine author Auberon Waugh--whose novelist father Evelyn Waugh considered New World wine an oxymoron--gushes over a collection of 1996 and '97 reds from the Montes winery in Chile...
Chile's new wine boom has been sparked by an upsurge in boutique vineyards like Santa Laura. Unlike many traditional Chilean winemakers, the Hartwig family, which runs the winery, disdains exaggerated harvests that compromise grape quality and makes earnest use of stainless-steel vat technology. The Hartwigs also take more care than is usual in Chile to master their terroir--making soil, climate and grape work in richer harmony. Similar attention is being paid in other newer wineries like MontGras, Carmen and Veramonte, which is bottling Chile's hot new grape, a Merlot cousin called Camenere...
...done it while keeping prices low. "California seems to assume people only want a Mercedes from quality wine," says Santa Laura manager Alejandro Hartwig Jr. "This doesn't have to be an elitist commodity." The question is whether that attitude will change--and spoil the original lure of Chilean wines. "I almost hate to praise them," says Waugh. "I'm afraid it will drive their prices...
PARIS--Jamie G. Aleval, 26, is one of the more colorful patrons at the McDonald's Cafe on the Champs Elysees. Chanting national songs with fellow Chilean fans, he sports a tall red hat emblazoned with the logo of the Chilean flag and a shirt to match. When tourists approach him, he good naturedly poses for pictures...