South America’s wine regions don’t ever sit still. They are constantly on the move and in the last two decades we have seen several new wine regions emerge in previously unimaginable locations: the Atacama desert, Patagonia and in the heights of the Andes mountains …
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Mauro Von Siebenthal is a man of fine tastes: he knows all the scores of Beethoven, has a penchant for oil paintings and has been collecting Bordeaux wines since before he was old enough to drink. Born and raised in Switzerland, he spent the first half of …
The rediscovery of Carménère is a fascinating story. While many different grape varieties have been brought back from obscurity in different periods of time, none have made such a fantastic reappearance as Carménère. Believed to be extinct for centuries, Carménère truly came back from …
There was little talk of Chilean Carignan before Vigno exploded on the wine scene in 2010. The first association of its kind in Chile, Vigno appeared as a small but formidable army of Carignan-fanatics ready to put this underappreciated variety on Chile’s wine map. …
What are the soils and climate of Maule, and essentially what is Maule terroir? Eduardo Jordan, winemaker at De Martino, discusses this unique Chilean wine region and shows us exactly why the soils are ideal for dry-harvesting Carignan. There’s also a little surprise living …
What is Vigno? Vigno stands for Vignadores de Carignan and is an association of producers whose goal is to create an appellation of origin for wines made from old Carignan vines that have been dry-farmed and bush-trained in the Maule Secano area. Why was Vigno set …
Carignan has not garnered many friends around the world. Indeed, the opinion of many leading wine experts could well make you decide to steer clear of the variety. Check out this quote, for instance, on the Carignan profile from the bible of the wine …
It was an absolute pleasure to be squeezed between two winemakers last week – both Arnaud Hereu and Andres Sanchez were in the hot seat for our Wine Drinking with Wine Makers session in Maule. I had spent the week in Maule visiting lots of …
We’ve pulled together this Maule wine guide and Fast Facts feature so that you can get to grips with Chile’s biggest wine region, Maule. This guide includes: the essentials of terroir (the soil types, climate, average temperatures, rainfall, longitude and latitude, and altitude); the …
Old-vine Semillon is one of South America’s best-kept secrets, and there are a handful of stellar Semillon wines coming to light in Chile today. As one of Chile’s most planted wine varieties in the mid 1900s, there is no shortage of old-vine Semillon. Semillon …