Written for The Drinks Business, Sep 2016
What they are making, is most likely what you are drinking. These ten winemakers command two thirds of the bottled Chilean wine exported in the last year. Their daily decisions in the vineyard and winery impact the wine that eventually meets your glass, and for that fact alone these men are some of the most powerful, or influential, winemakers in Chile.
The list is compiled with Wines of Chile statistics on the quantity of bottled wine exported from Chile between June 2015 and May 2016. We opted not to include bulk wine exported as this is a blind spot for the consumer, but it is noteworthy that bulk wine still plays an important role in wine exports.
There are of course some familiar brands missing from the list. Perhaps most notably Viña Montes and Viña Errazuriz don’t make it to the top ten in volume, although in export value they figure seventh and eighth respectively. There is also a clear lack of female winemakers on the list. If we took data from 2014, Viña Carta Vieja’s female winemaker Rosario Dominguez Gil would have made ninth position but a drop in exportation this year slides them into eleventh position. So for now it is an all-male line up.
Without further adieu, here’s the Top Ten…
