From Chile to Australia: how to enjoy a round-the-world trip in a glass
It is worth taking a few well-calibrated detours: the rest of the world offers interesting, sometimes surprising alternatives to our production
Outside Europe (which we wrote about here) and beyond the usual France, the realities capable of producing great wines are now numerous and far from marginal. Notwithstanding my all too stated preference for Italia, it is worth taking a few well-calibrated detours: interesting - sometimes surprising - alternatives to our production can be found in the rest of the world.
From Argentina to Australia, via the ancient traditions of Lebanon and South Africa, to the more contemporary trajectories of New Zealand, the United States and Chile, nowadays the geography of wine resembles more a moving organism than a placid living room map. And, every now and then, a transoceanic journey - even if only in the glass - is more than recommended.
The Andes Mountains provide the backdrop for two outstanding wines: the Argentinian Malbec and the Chilean Carmenere, vines with a curious and vaguely mocking history. Both were born in Bordeaux and then, due to different vicissitudes, almost forgotten right where they were at home. With the exception of the enclave of Cahors, where Malbec resists in purity with a certain obstinacy, it is in Argentina, between Mendoza and Luján de Cuyo, that it has found its consecration. Here it expresses wines that are deep, concentrated and persistent, with a vocation for longevity that does not need to be proclaimed: it can be sensed at the first sip.
Moving to Chile, between the Colchagua and Maipo valleys, one encounters the most famous Carmenere. With one detail not to be overlooked: phylloxera - that unfriendly little animal that devastated European viticulture - has never arrived here, thanks to an almost protective geography, with the Andes on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. The result? Mostly free-range vines (ungrafted vines) a rare case on a world scale.
I have a soft spot for Chilean Carmenere, especially the less shouty versions: elegant, spicy, with a character that carefully avoids banality. A good Carmenere hardly goes unnoticed.
