It’s after 3 p.m. and, as predicted, the winds have picked up in Viña Errázuriz’s expansive vineyard near the Pacific coast. Three poster-sized maps showing the estate, its proximity to other company properties and the location compared to other Chilean winemaking regions have blown away from their easels and need to be held while owner Eduardo Chadwick and his team introduce the site.
Located 12 kilometres from the Pacific Coast, this location was purchased in 2005 following a long search for a suitable place to grow white wine varieties, notably sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. Errázuriz was growing those grapes in vineyards in the coastal Casablanca and San Antonio valleys, but he was eager to explore the potential of the Aconcagua region, where his family’s winery was founded in 1870.
His search led him here, to a landscape of grass and forest. The location wasn’t close enough to the coast to be a desirable place to live and was cooler and more arid than properties further inland where farmers grow avocados and cherimoyas, a sweet tropical fruit also known as a custard apple. Land costs were $10,000 CLP per hectare compared with $100,000 for viable land to farm other crops. The real expense, Chadwick explains, was the creation of a dam and ways to get water to irrigate the vines. “It was a gamble,” he says.
His belief in its potential paid off, which is why our group is holding on to our hats in the breeze to inspect vines prior to the start of the 2024 harvest.
Chile’s reputation for full-bodied and flavourful red wines, notably cabernet sauvignon and cabernet-merlot blends, was well established when Chadwick made his purchase. The fortune of the country’s white wines lagged, a victim of lesser quality vines, planted in areas that were too warm to make refreshing styles. Françoise Vannie-Petit, a geologist from Burgundy, was hired to conduct an extensive survey of the site and guide the decision on where to plant each variety, resulting in the creation of more than 100 plots.
The detailed maps show 230 hectares of planted vines, including 102 hectares of sauvignon blanc, 66 hectares of pinot noir and 52 hectares of chardonnay vines. Syrah is contained in a combined area of 12 hectares deemed too warm for the other varieties.
Those vines provide fruit for a range of labels in the Errázuriz portfolio, including the Aconcagua Costa wines that often appear in Canadian shops and Las Pizarras, a tier of high-end wines that feature wines made from the best parcels of chardonnay, pinot noir and syrah. Based on a tasting of the soon-to-be-released 2022 vintage, the Las Pizarras chardonnay, pinot and syrah are fresh, complex and age-worthy wines that rival the quality of the highly touted icon wines. These winds are changing perspectives about Chile’s cool-climate wines.