Chile’s wine regions, the San Antonio Valley

Date: June 7, 2011

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Matetic is one of Chile’s most remarkable wine estates. It’s a huge, hilly 16 000 hectare property, mostly consisting of eucalyptus and pine woods, but with three main agricultural products: sheep, blueberries and wine. It’s the wine that was the focus of our visit.

The Matetic family are of Croatian origin, and came to Chile 100 years ago. They began in Patagonia, at the southern tip of the country, where they have 100 000 hectares of land used for sheep and dairy farming. They also made a lot of money through ironwork, where they had a near monopoly. They bought the Matetic Estate in the San Antonio Valley some 20 years ago. The wine business was started in 1999, but it is only in 2008 that they made a profit for the first time.

As well as making some of Chile’s best wines, Matetic is gaining recognition because it is one of the few Chilean estates to have adopted biodynamics, a supercharged form of organics that is gaining ground in winegrowing. 120 hectares of vineyards have been planted to date, and the whole estate (not just the vineyards) is worked organically. The grapes are certified organic by BCS since 2004, and for the last couple of years the vineyards have been managed bodynamically. The goal is to become certified in due course.

Matetic is in San Antonio, the cool part of Casablanca, and just 20 km from the sea, so it benefits from sea breezes in the afternoon. There’s a high diurnal temperature fluctuation – in the summer it can range from 27 C during the afternoon to 7 C at night. The low vigour soils are ideal for viticulture. They are well drained and the roots of the vines go down 2–4 m looking for nutrients. The soils are decomposed granite with 40–60 cm of friable clay on the surface.

The Matetic winery was built in 2004 and currently processes 300 000 litres. Currently some 14 000 cases are released annually. Pauls reckons that the maximum capacity, which will be reached in 4 years, is likely to be 35 000 cases. All the grapes are hand harvested into bins, and there’s a selection table. The grapes are crushed and then taken to the fermenters by gravity. Open fermenters are used for the reds, with punching down and pumping over both employed. All the wines except for the Sauvignon Blanc go into barrel.

SOURCE: http://www.wineanorak.com/chile/chileanwine_part4_Matetic.htm

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