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Limarí

Wine-growing area (also Valle de Limarí, Limarí Valley) in the Coquimbo region in the north of Chile; see there.

The Republic of Chile in the south-west of South America with its capital Santiago de Chile covers 756,102 square kilometres. The country stretches over 4,275 kilometres in a north-south direction along the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. In a west-east direction, the extension is less than 200 kilometres on average. Because of this unusual shape, due to its location on the western slope of the Andes Cordillera, Chile is often called "La tierra alargada" (elongated land).

Childe - politische Landkarte und Karte Weinbaugebiete

The country borders the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, Peru to the north, Bolivia to the north-east and Argentina to the east. Chile also includes Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the Pacific, the island of Salas y Gómez, the Juan Fernández Islands (including Robinson Crusoe Island), the Desventuradas Islands and, to the south, the Ildefonso Islands and the Diego Ramírez Islands. The country has access to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Magellan, which belongs entirely to Chile.

History

Viticulture has a long tradition here. The first vines were planted in 1551 by the Spanish conqistador Don Francisco de Aguirre de Meneses (1507-1581) in the town of La Serena in the Región de Coquimbo, which was founded in 1543 in the small northern region. These included the Criolla Chica (Listán Prieto), which originated in Spain and is referred to here as País or Negra Antigua (see under Criolla). A few years later, his son-in-law Juan Jufré de Loayza (1516-1578) introduced vines near Santiago in the Maule area. Cheap bulk wine was produced and shipped to Peru and Mexico.

In 1578, the English privateer Francis Drake (1540-1596) captured a ship carrying 1,770 wineskins from Chile to Peru. Chile became an increasing competitor for European wines. For this reason, the Spanish royal family prohibited the planting of further vines in 1620 in order to protect Spain's wine trade with the American continent. In 1830, the government established the Quinta Normal agricultural research station. The French naturalist Claudio Gay (1800-1873) introduced European varieties; by 1850 there were already 70 different ones.

Modern viticulture

In 1851, Bertrand Silvestre Ochagavia Echazareta brought the first noble grape varieties from Bordeaux, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Merlot. Chile began to export wine again and at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 there was even a Grand Prix for a Chilean wine. In 1938, prohibitive measures were adopted by the government. The planting of new vineyards was prohibited, wine production was limited to a maximum of 60 litres per citizen and taxes on wine were drastically increased to combat alcohol abuse. This led to a stagnation in viticulture. The ban on planting vineyards was only lifted again in 1974. This led to a great upswing in viticulture.

Miguel Torres Carbó (1909-1991), who founded the Miguel Torres winery near Curicó in 1979, played a major role in this. He was the first in Chile to introduce stainless steel tanks and small barrique barrels. From 1985, new vineyards were planted on a large scale and European quality wine grape varieties were imported. In 1985, the País variety still occupied almost half of the total vineyard area, but today it only accounts for less than 10%. Numerous joint ventures with Californian, French and German partners subsequently led to decisive improvements in quality.

Cultivation areas

Due to the special geographical location of this extremely elongated country (with the Pacific Ocean to the west and the protective Andes to the east), phylloxera has never been able to gain a foothold there. It is assumed that the traditional artificial irrigation (especially in the north, where there is hardly any rain) in the form of flooding of the vineyards repeatedly destroys the few specimens. The Incas had already built an extensive network of canals to irrigate 1.2 million hectares of land. This is why there are still large areas of ungrafted, ungrafted vines in...

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Dr. Christa Hanten

For my many years of work as an editor with a wine and culinary focus, I always like to inform myself about special questions at Wine lexicon. Spontaneous reading and following links often leads to exciting discoveries in the wide world of wine.

Dr. Christa Hanten
Fachjournalistin, Lektorin und Verkosterin, Wien

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