South America
The wine producing nations of South America are making great strides in improving the quality of their product. The wines of Chile are the most predominant on the foreign market, but Chile's larger neighbour, Argentina, is also making an impact.
The traditional Chilean vineyard was the Maipo, in the hot central valley around Santiago. Recently there has been a rapid expansion to the south, to the north, towards the coast and up the foothills of the Andes. Chile has some amazing advantages, most famously it is phylloxera free and those old vineyards, mostly of Cabernet and Carmenere, are ungrafted. Lately Chile has shown great success with Sauvignon Blanc and Charonnay in coastal areas such as Casablanca, and with Syrah too. The benign climate makes organic viticulture relatively easy and it is certainly extremely successful with quite a few truly superb organic and 'biodynamic' wines being made.
Even more dramatic has been the emergence of Argentina as a quality producer. Only a few years ago Argentina, though unknown internationally, had a vineyard some 5 times the size of Chile's. In theory it was the sleeping giant of the new world, although in practice there was a huge job to be done in modernising the wineries and nearly completely replanting the vineyard. This job is well underway and with the opening of high altitude, high quality regions such as Tupungato, Argentina is becoming a serious player.
As well as these two countries, there is also a small amount of wine coming out of Uruguay. This is fairly high quality and generally european in style. The main red is made from Tannat, but there is the full range of varieties, red and white.
There is an Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tour to Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in February.
Chile, Argentina & Uruguay
15 - 27 February 2009
Chile - Vineyards North to South
21 February - 4 March 2010
