Tag: wine

Decanter: South American Chardonnay Tasting
The wine-producing countries of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay are making some seriously exciting wines, so we asked regional expert Amanda Barnes to blind taste a line-up of premium Chardonnays. Quality is higher than ever, she says, with balanced wines in myriad styles waiting to be discovered.

Only in the last decade has South American Chardonnay become something to get excited about. But, as this tasting reaffirmed, it really is worth getting excited about – especially at the premium end, with complex and engaging wines coming from the coast, desert, mountains and even the wind-beaten steppes of Patagonia. This impressive surge in quality is ultimately down to the intellectual journey that South America’s winemakers have been on: from their fastidious research into the multitude of soil types and microclimates (even within the same vineyard) to a much more mature approach to winemaking and an increasingly deft hand when it comes to oak ageing. My standout Chardonnay producers in this tasting all used oak (barrels and foudres) to frame their wines, but none of the wines were overshadowed by oak as they may have been a decade ago. Instead, most of the top wines shone for their fruit purity and elegance.

Read the full article in Decanter, June 2021
May 21, 2021
Decanter: Explore Patagonia wine routes

Published in Decanter, December 2020

If you’re planning your next great wine holiday, here’s somewhere for your list. Go bold, go big: a week-long tour in the wilds of southern Chile and Argentina will reward adventure seekers and wine lovers alike. Amanda Barnes shares her itinerary for the ultimate road trip through a land of natural wonders and equally adventurous wines.

Patagonia inspires adventure. Spreading 1 million km2 across the southern tip of Chile and Argentina, this wild and untamed land is blissfully remote, with breathtaking landscapes that will enchant the most intrepid explorers. From its hanging glaciers and jaw-dropping mountain spires to its snow-capped volcanoes and cobalt-blue lakes. Patagonia’s remarkable landscapes have captivated the adventurous for hundreds of years.

Read the full article on Decanter.

Read more about the wine regions of Patagonia in the South America Wine Guide

March 18, 2021
Decanter: Brazil’s best wine routes

Published in Decanter, October 2020

As the Brazilian wine scene gathers momentum, wine tourism across this huge country is flourishing. Amanda Barnes recommends three fascinatingly diverse regions to explore, with tips on wineries to visit, where to stay and where to eat.

Serra Gaucha: The mecca of Brazilian wine

The heartland of Brazilian wine, with almost half of the country’s vineyards, Serra Gaucha rose to its current status after the mass Italian immigration of the late 19th century. At the time, families from all over Europe made their way to the new world with the promise of plenty of land and new opportunities.

Read the full guide, including the wine routes of Santa Catarina and Serra da Mantiqueira at Decanter.

Read more about Brazilian wine in Amanda Barnes’ South America Wine Guide

March 18, 2021
Exploring Montevideo & Canelones in Uruguay

Written for Decanter Magazine, October 2019

Exploring Uruguay and its wine regions feels like you’ve just been let in on one of South America’s best kept secrets. One of the smallest countries on the continent, Uruguay doesn’t have the same bombastic personality as many of its Latin American neighbours but sits as a silent siren for those in the know.

Uruguay’s steadily growing economy and progressive politics have made it a haven of international investment and its sleepy capital city is becoming increasingly cosmopolitan with Uruguay’s wine culture coming to the fore. As word gets out, there’s no better time to discover Montevideo and its wine route.

Uncovering the backstreets and idiosyncrasies of Montevideo

The tortured notes of the ivories being tickled are all the more soul stirring under candlelight. The pianist expertly pulls us through undulating emotions as he pieces together tango songs that were first written on the streets of Montevideo a century ago. Although this tango dinner show at Primuseum is number one on TripAdvisor, the small collection of warmly lit tables huddled around the piano and its pile of crusty old music sheets is satisfyingly intimate and personal. The friendly waiter pours me another glass of rich Tannat as I dig into my steak and wonder why Montevideo never received the same hype for its steak and tango as Buenos Aires.

Tango was, afterall, invented between the ports and streets of both cities, and the steak is every bit as good (if not better, dare I say) in this country where cows outnumber people 3 to 1. But Uruguayans don’t boast about their claim to tango or steak. Nor do they very often confess that they have the longest carnival in the world — their 40 days makes Rio’s six look positively meagre. “We don’t really like to talk about ourselves too much,” a Uruguayan friend tells me the next evening over wine in a hip urban market, Mercado Ferrando. “It just isn’t our style.”

Although no-one will admit it, style seems effortless in Montevideo. The streets are a parade of architecture movements ranging from neoclassical giants like Palacio Salvo and Teatro Solís to belle époque facades and modernist beach houses nonchalantly strung together. Even the airport is garnered in design awards.

“Montevideo has more art-deco architecture than any city other than New York — and yet it’s still off-the-radar as a destination,” British-born Karen Higgs, author of Guru’Guay Guide to Montevideo, tells me over coffee in the Old City where she’s been based since 2000. “The secret delights of Montevideo are not immediately evident, which is what makes their discovery all the more delightful.”

Indeed, Montevideo’s streets can in fact feel eerily quiet during the afternoons and it’s hard to believe that a third of the country lives here. In the world’s most laid back capital city, sipping yerba mate on the 22km seafront promenade constitutes for a significant portion of weekend plans. In the evening however, Montevideo is a hive of cultural happenings — albeit mainly behind closed doors.

The Old City’s historic bars and cafes are a good place to start, and hark back to the golden era of Uruguay’s literati (including many tango composers). Catching a milonga is a quintessential Montevideo experience, but it is perhaps the murga that gives you a deeper insight into the idiosyncrasies of Uruguayan culture. This street performance combining political satire with comedy and song is a pillar of Uruguayan Carnival but performances and rehearsals are held year-round. Another rich cultural expression of Uruguay is candombe — an invigorating dance performed to the beat of many drums which tells the tales of the African slave experience in Uruguay.

The rich cultural fabric of Uruguay is there to be disinterred, and a few days in the capital is just enough to scratch beneath the surface.

The wine route and wineries of Canelones

Although Canelones hosts two third’s of Uruguay’s wine production, 90% of the wineries are family owned and it is often the family who welcome you in — making you privy to their wine heritage within moments. With mainly boutique productions, each family has their own unique stamp on their wines and exploring Canelones provides a wealth of diversity in wine styles and varieties.

Vineyards appear from within the city limits and nearby Canelones became Uruguay’s prime vine growing territory in the 20th century precisely because of its proximity to the thirsty domestic market. The mild Atlantic climate is also conducive to quality grape production with rich clay soils spread across the undulating hillsides which channel refreshing coastal breezes throughout the wine region — essential for this more humid climate…

Read the full article by Amanda Barnes in Decanter Magazine, October 2019 edition. Or online at Decanter.com

August 30, 2019
The ‘Criolla’ wine revival: a taste of South American wine history

The oldest grape varieties in South America have been sidelined for the past hundred years, but a new generation is now reclaiming its lost winemaking heritage as Criolla varieties re-emerge from the shadows. Amanda Barnes has the inside story…

Published in Decanter Magazine, October 2018

When the Spanish first conquered the Americas in the 1500s, they brought the holy trinity of cultivars – olive trees, wheat and grapevines. Whether planted as sticks or seeds, the first grapes to grow were known as the Criolla, or Mission, varieties: a select handful of varieties picked for their highyielding and resilient nature, and destined to conquer the New World.

Of these founding varieties, which included Moscatel, Pedro Ximénez and Torontel, the most important was a red grape commonly known as Listán Prieto in Spain, Mission in the US, País in Chile, Criolla Chica in Argentina and some 45 other synonyms in-between.

The foundations of South America’s wine industry were built on these early Criolla varieties as viticulture spread upwards from Mexico to the US, and southwards to Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and beyond. Crosses spawned South America’s first native grape varieties – including Argentina’s Torrontés – with more than 100 Criolla varieties identified in South America today.

Forgotten patrimony

In the mid-1800s the first French varieties arrived on the continent and plantations of Criolla varieties have been in decline ever since, replaced by international varieties or relegated to bulk wine, juice and table grape production.

According to a study by the University of Santiago, in 1833 the finest Criolla variety, Listán Prieto, accounted for more than 90% of Chile’s and Argentina’s vineyards.

Today it is just 7% and 1% respectively. It, and the other Criolla varieties, have similarly fallen into severe decline across the rest of the Americas.

Incidentally, following phylloxera, Listán Prieto has all but disappeared from its native Spain – with only a dozen hectares surviving in the phylloxera-free haven of the Canaries.

The only remaining stronghold for Listán Prieto is in Chile, where 9,600ha of vines (locally called País) can be found piecemeal in the properties of some 6,000 growers, mostly in the southern regions of Maule, Itata and Bío Bío.

It is here, where grapes are cheap and land plentiful, that replanting didn’t happen to the same extent as in other regions, leaving a treasure trove of old vines.

Most País vines are more than 100 years old (planted before the landslide of French varieties) and some vineyards date back to the late-1500s – a fact that enchanted a new wave of winemakers coming into Chile.

Read the full article at Decanter.com

View the PDF version here:

Criolla: Full Circle

Read more about Criolla wines and varieties on South America Wine Guide

September 17, 2018
Interview: Daniel Pi

Never more comfortable than when breaking the winemaking mould, the Peñaflor veteran is a central figure in the story of Argentina’s wine industry, as Amanda Barnes reveals in this interview with Daniel Pi…

Published in Decanter magazine, October 2018

Overseeing the production of more than 200 million litres of wine each year, Daniel Pi doesn’t have time for much else. ‘I’m lucky I love what I do!’ he says sincerely, and you get the impression that he really does love his job. Pi may be softly spoken but, as director of winemaking for Grupo Peñaflor, he is at the helm of one of the biggest wine producers in the world and has been instrumental in building its success. His own success is down to decades of hard graft and determination – but Pi also has an intrepid spirit that’s taken him beyond the ordinary.

Born into a middle-class family, Pi was the first to attend university, choosing to study architecture. Disillusioned with the creative limits that restrain architects in Mendoza – a region known for its earthquakes – he soon switched to winemaking. Graduating five years later, Pi was ready to start making wine – but the industry wasn’t quite ready for him.‘I finished my degree and was immediately unemployed,’ he recalls sardonically. ‘There was an overproduction crisis. White wines were fashionable and everyone was overcropping, prices were low and the quality wasn’t good. Let’s say it was “complicated”…’

Read the full article and interview with Daniel Pi on Decanter.com

You can view a PDF version here: Interview Daniel Pi.

September 17, 2018
Chile’s Central Valley

While most of Chile’s wines come from the Central Valley, they have a reputation of being the least exciting the country has to offer. That is changing, however, with winemakers injecting passion into their products, writes Amanda Barnes in The Drinks Business. PDF: Chile’s Central Valley

It is easy to become distracted by what is happening on the fringes of Chile’s wine scene. As a country that is constantly pioneering new regions at its extremes there is always something, or somewhere, new to try. Although the fringes are exciting to write about, they don’t represent the overwhelming reality. More than 90% of Chile’s wine production comes from its ‘Central Valley’, a ubiquitous superzone that covers the Maipo, Rapel, Curicó and Maule regions, and usually translates to the most economic, and least exciting, wines. The Central Valley is, however, undergoing a revolution. It is a gradual revolution that won’t rock the boat, but vintage by vintage there’s a sure and steady change of tide as traditional Chile is being reinvented by winemakers seeking fresher, purer expressions of the grape varieties and region.

Chile’s Central Valley stretches over 300 miles, making it nigh on impossible to generalise about anything. However, one thing that can be said is that when Pablo Morande pioneered the coastal region of Casablanca in the 1980s, many wine producers followed suit, looking for cooler climates by the coast. The same desire for cool climates pushed producers up the foothills of the Andes, seeking the lower temperatures of high altitude. Although the majority of wine production still came from the Central Valley, it was no longer considered ‘cool’. In recent years, though, wine producers have looked at ways of changing their viticulture to capture the freshness that even the warmer middle ranges of Chile can offer.

“In Maquis I wanted to make wines that were balanced and fresh from the vineyard, and so we started making tests with an earlier harvest,” says Juan Alejandro Jofre, the former winemaker for Viña Maquis in Colchagua, who helped steer the wines to a fresher style, instigating a greater change in the Central Valley style. “We controlled irrigation to provoke some hydric stress just before véraison to get an earlier maturation. To do this you have to interpret the climate of each vintage and make good decisions about when to irrigate, carefully measuring the levels of nitrogen in the soil.”

This discipline is one that Maquis still pursues today and Jofre has continued to use in his own line of wines – Vinos Fríos del Año – which translates as ‘cold wines of the year’ yet always comes from warmer regions such as Curicó, by managing the viticulture. The naturally lower alcohol and higher acidity mean there is no need for correction in the winery, and the resulting wines are bright and juicy with a punchy acidity.

Larger producers too have been seeking fresher expressions from the vineyard, and we have seen the mass production of Chile shift a gear in recent years, as Marcelo Papa, winemaker at Concha y Toro – Chile’s largest wine producer – explains: “Ten years ago we were more focused on getting fully ripe and mature fruit, and we were ageing wines with more oak, the alcohol was higher, we were looking for more opulence. But today we are coming back, we are bringing everything into better balance – good maturation but not overripe, a balanced acidity and freshness. I think this has changed the style of wines in a very positive way.”

Along with a change in viticulture, there’s a slow change happening in the wineries too. While the early 2000s saw a boom in winemaking technology and additives in Chile, the pendulum is now swinging the other way and producers are moving away from heavy-handed oak and ripe concentration…

Read the full article in The Drinks Business, September 2017

December 7, 2017
South America’s Top 10 wine hotels

South America used to be the domain of gap year backpackers and shoestring tourism. That isn’t the case any more. There’s been a boom in luxury adventure tourism across the Southern Cone, with five-star hotels nestled into the desert plains of the Atacama and down to the waterfalls and glacier lakes of Patagonia. In the wine regions too you can experience the wilderness of the landscapes and the soul of the local culture while sleeping on high-threadcount cotton sheets and sipping the finest wines…

Read the full article in Decanter Magazine, October 2017

September 10, 2017
Harvest Report Chile 2017

‘It has been the earliest harvest I remember,’ said winemaker Marcelo Retamal, comparing 2017 to the last two decades of Chilean vintages.

Chile’s 2017 harvest arrived up to a month early in some regions, but was also notable for high temperatures and low yields.

‘2017 is clearly an atypical vintage, marked by extremely high temperatures, early physiological stages from budding to harvest, and particularly low yields,’ said Michel Friou, winemaker at Maipo’s Almaviva, where yields were down 26%.

Read full report on Decanter

May 23, 2017
Riesling: The Queen of Grapes

Citrus aromas and a refreshing acidity make riesling a great accompaniment to food, and the latest offerings, ranging from bone dry to lusciously sweet, are nothing short of regal.

Written for The Guardian, print May 2017

Riesling is a polarising wine, but once you get the riesling bug it’s hard to shake. Originating in Germany, this white grape took the fancy of the clergy folk to such an extent that in the mid-18th century a local cardinal declared that the whole Rheingau region should be planted with riesling. Since then, the grape has become synonymous with German wine, and its characteristic citrus, floral and petrol aromas have accrued fans all over the world.

But as every partygoer knows there’s a danger in having too much of a good thing. Riesling steadily gained popularity until the 1970s, when an overproduction of cheap, sickly-sweet examples of the wine trickled through the market. Rather than quench the public thirst for the varietal, it gave many people an aversion and poor old riesling faded into the bittersweet background.

But it isn’t considered the queen of grapes for nothing. Riesling’s ability to reflect its terroir, age gracefully and deliver expressive wines, ranging from bone dry to lusciously sweet, means it can pair with everything from Thai food to calamari and even lemon pie.

Cono Sur’s rieslings are grown in Bío-Bío, Chile’s cooler southern region, which lends the wine a spine of acidity and a balance of sweetness, fit for any banquet.

Written for The Guardian, print May 2017

May 16, 2017