Artículo #27
Advances in viniculture add to Chile’s attraction for investors
Chile’s unique geography, with its mountains to the east, oceans to the west and desert to the north confers a unique advantage to the country’s wine growers. They are, in effect, protected by physical barriers from invading pests such as phylloxera, which has blighted vines across the world. In addition to these advantages, Chile not only offers an ideal climate for grape growing, it has also been making economic reforms and increasing efforts to encourage trade — it is a signatory, for example, to the recently agreed Trans-Pacific Partnership. Overseas vineyard investors, especially those looking for growing regions that might offer protection from the effects of climate change, are taking notice. What they are witnessing is a massive increase in wine production in a country that Miguel Torres, one of Spain’s best known winemakers, has called a “viticulture paradise”.
Texto destacado
A natural protection from pests helps production vineyard covered with snow Individual flavours: improved techniques mean vines can even be grown high in the Andes.
Vineyards have extended the areas under cultivation by 25 per cent over the past five years. Meanwhile, increasingly sophisticated viticulturalists are discovering new growing areas as the effects of climate change and the positive effects of improved techniques encourage them to investigate further afield. About 138,000 hectares of land are currently devoted to growing grapes across an area that spans more than 14 degrees of latitude — a distance of about 1,700km.
New growing regions are being developed such as the Itata Valley in the far south and Chile Chico and Limari Valley to the north. Because of the country’s natural protection from pests, the organic segment of the industry is seeing particularly strong growth. Chile’s vineyards are set among two mountain ranges of the Andes with valleys that cross from east to west.
Temperatures are regulated by the cold Humboldt current that flows through the Pacific Ocean along the west coast of South America and by the mountains themselves, both helping to mitigate rising global temperatures.
The vineyards are dispersed across hillsides, in valleys and in coastal areas where limited water forced the industry to modernise water management and replace traditional flooding irrigation with a drip system that has a benevolent effect on the quality of the grapes. The grapes are picked earlier, are lower in alcohol content and produce wines that are much easier to drink In the past, people talked about the difference between wines from the northern and southern valleys. Today, however, it is also possible to taste the difference between wines from the foothills of the Andes and those from the coastal regions.
The developments have been no small achievement. Wineries are cultivating Sauvignon Blanc as high as 900m above sea level in the foothills of the Andes, producing exquisite white, mineralised wines. Grapes hang from the vine at the Montgras winery which continues to operate after the recent earthquake damaged its facility on March 12, 2010 in Santa Cruz, Chile
In the Elqui valley there are vineyards at almost 2,000m above sea level. In the south, Pinot Noirs are coming from the lake district of Chile.
An attractive proposition for foreign investors.
Meanwhile Muscat of Alexandria grapes are being grown as far south as the 38th latitude. New varieties have been introduced and Mourvèdre, Carignan, Cinsaut and Gewürztraminer, are among a few that have adapted remarkably well.
Chile has also become an attractive proposition for foreign investors. It offers a strong legal and judicial system and has made efforts to encourage international trade. In 2010 it became the first South American country to become a member of the OECD. Chilean winemakers are making wines that carry an authentic expression of their origin Foreign direct investment totalled more than $23bn in 2014, an increase of 15 per cent over the previous year, according to CieChile, the government agency that oversees foreign investment.
FDI in the rest of the region dropped by 19 per cent in the same period. At the same time, prices have become more competitive following the depreciation of the Chilean peso as a result of the country’s weaker growth outlook caused by the collapse in the price of copper — Chile’s main export.
Add to these incentives the fact that the recent drought has brought down land prices and labour costs remain low. New foreign investors will be walking a well-trodden path. Mr Torres is credited with helping Chile’s wine industry to take off in the early 1990s with his company’s investments in mainstream wine producers. Other foreign investors include the Marnier Lapostolle family, Mondavi, and Baron Philippe de Rothschild who have helped to bring new technologies to the industry in general. In more recent years new investors have formed joint ventures or alliances with smaller producers such as the O. Fournier Group, Siebenthal and Gillmore helping to bring further diversification to the industry.
(By M. Molina Shaw. The Financial Times, 2015)
VINIFERA archive images.