A lot has changed since I went to Chile in the 1990s. With a near 500 year history of wine production this singular country looks like it is finally beginning to realise its potential as a quality wine producing nation. As long and thin as it is and with a variety of altitudes and terroirs, the Chilean wine industry has until recently concentrated on bulk production and they have been very successful. Now, finally, it seems that many more producers are cultivating organically and biodynamically and with slightly lower yields and a finer expression of terroir in these cases. Additionally the country’s growers have been gradually exploiting the more extreme areas, going both further south and higher up as well as nearer the coast in the rugged north. Virtually all the water for vines in Chile comes from winter snows in the form of controlled and rationed allocation. Until recently it was thought that Chile was the only phylloxera-free country in the world, but clearly someone has been smuggling ‘suitcase’ clones and avoiding quarantine, because the louse now seems established, if not that widespread as yet. (CW 10/09/18)