There are two shrines at Viñedo Chadwick, the handsome mansion on the outskirts of Santiago where Eduardo Chadwick, the current owner of Viña Errazuriz, grew up. There is a room full of polo memorabilia, crossed polo sticks, old-fashioned helmets, and dozens of pictures of Chadwick’s much-admired father Don Alfonso, captain of the Chilean team and 19-time winner of the national cup. Among the dozens of faded black-and-white photographs of men on horses, there’s a picture of this most old-world of aristocrats with a young Duke of Edinburgh. Chadwick himself doesn’t play any more. “I used to, but then I stopped,” he says.
Of course he did. He had more important things on his mind, as is evidenced by the holy of holies – what could be called the Berlin Room. To anyone who knows fine Chilean wine, the Berlin tastings are as familiar as the Judgement of Paris. In January 2004 a gathering of two dozen international critics, chaired by Chadwick, Steven Spurrier and René Gabriel, blind-tasted two Errazuriz wines, Viñedo Chadwick 2000 and Seña 2001, alongside Château Lafite, Margaux, Latour, Tignanello, Sassicaia, Solaia and other icons, all 2000s and 2001s. To everyone’s astonishment the Chilean wines were voted best in class. In all, Errazuriz wines took five of the top ten spots. Lafite 2000 came third.
Chilean treasures
“All I wanted was to be considered amongst the best,” Chadwick says. “I thought we had little to lose. Our wines had no Parker rating, and wherever we went there was scepticism about quality. I wanted to show Chile could take its place alongside the great wines. It was very surprising to be in the top three,” he says with understatement.
The Berlin tasting has been repeated many times around the world, usually with the same success accorded the Chadwick wines. It’s the single-most-important event in the history of this remarkable company and it’s no wonder that there should be a room dedicated to it at the family house, with mural-size images of the celebrity tasters, maps, videos, and a tribute book the size of the Gutenberg Bible.
Eduardo Chadwick presides over a company, or a collection of companies, that own just over 1,200 ha of vineland from Aconcagua to Colchagua. It’s not a lot: Chilean giant Concha y Toro has 10,000 ha. Nevertheless, the size and breadth of the portfolio can be bewildering.
First there is Viña Errazuriz, the winery founded in 1870 by the redoubtable Don Maximiano Errazuriz, who made one fortune in copper (he cornered a third of the world market) and another in gas. He drained the marshes in Aconcagua 100 km north of Santiago in order to build his winery, planting vineyards with French clones. He also built a town for his workers complete with schools and a church.
Today the nineteenth-century buildings have been supplemented by a dramatic steel and concrete winery that pulls off the difficult trick of being utterly modern, while perfectly in keeping with both the warm bricks of the original chai, and the sweeping Andean cordillera behind.
From its 390 ha of vineyard, Errazuriz produces a range of wines that can be found on shelves from South Korea to San Francisco and all points in between. The strongest markets are the UK, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Holland, the US, Russia, Korea, Japan, China and Switzerland – but there are some 60 countries where you can find the wines, ranging from the top-end Don Maximiano or La Cumbre, through the blend collection, the Wild Ferment wines, the Max Reserva Bordeaux blend, and entry-level Estate wines from Cabernet Sauvignon to Fumé Blanc.
Under the Errazuriz umbrella, but considered separate companies, there are four other estates – Viña Arboleda, Seña, Viñedo Chadwick and Viña Caliterra – all experimental in their way, each with its own set of interesting characteristics. The vinous jewel amongst these is the ultra-iconic Seña, star of Berlin, the fruit of a joint venture between Robert Mondavi and Chadwick, a Bordeaux blend (with a dash of Carmenere) of extraordinary power and finesse. The Seña vineyard, a landscaped plot on the southern reaches of the Aconcagua river, is exquisite.
Then there is Viñedo Chadwick, 15 ha of Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Merlot planted by Chadwick on his father’s beloved polo field at the family home (there’s an unsentimental streak to Eduardo). The rest of the estate had been sold to the Rothschilds’ Almaviva during the political upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. There’s just one wine, a $200.00 Cabernet Sauvignon.
Then there is Caliterra, another Mondavi joint venture, and in many ways one of the most interesting of the Chadwick experiments. Caliterra is a remote 1,000-ha estate (of which a quarter is planted, to Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenere, Merlot and other reds) in the hills of Colchagua, a couple of hundred kilometres south of Santiago. It’s Chadwick’s most southern project, the fruit of a road trip he and Mondavi took in the early 1990s; the veteran Californian was apparently bowled over by the beauty of the landscape and its Mediterranean climate. Today it’s a hotchpotch of different levels of wine, from the entry-level (sub-$10.00 wines) to the premium (the $50.00 Cenit), and while it has a good US market, it is “struggling” in the UK, its marketing manager Marcela Herrera Espaliat says, “though with new packaging on the 2010 vintage we should do better.”
Caliterra does feel a bit like a forgotten paradise, and Chadwick comes close to admitting he may have neglected it of late. “It’s true that I’ve dedicated a lot of time over the years to [the wineries at] Aconcagua…there are so many projects now to work on, we need to look at each of them with equal care.”
Talk to him about Seña, however, and his eyes light up. “It is my baby,” he says. “From the very beginning it’s been close to my heart. It’s so protected from the winds and the coast and we’ve taken so much patience and time to develop it.”
Seña is indeed a beautiful plot. In common with all his properties Chadwick takes care over how it looks. The vineyards are sculpted around the landscape – there are few straight lines as the rows accommodate natural features.
“I believe that you should have a wine that is a pure reflection of the property. The vineyard is sustainable, so it also has to look sustainable,” he says. “We made sure we kept the most beautiful trees, the ravines, the flora and fauna, so everything is in harmony with its nature. If everything is in balance, from vineyard to winemaking, it’s much more interesting. There’s more soul.”
While he might talk about the beauty of soul in the vineyard, there’s nothing unworldly about Chadwick. His working relationship with his right-hand man, the winemaker Francisco ‘Pancho’ Baettig, demonstrates the constant tension between commercial reality and the aesthetics of fine wine. Baettig it seems will always push for a bit more freshness, while Chadwick will hold back. “Eduardo’s approach has a commercial element,” Baettig says. “I try to reassure him.”
For his part, Chadwick fears too much green in the wine. “Francisco believes we can still go a bit further towards purity and pure expression of each variety. The danger is that if you go too far the wine could become green.”
Battling perceptions
Commercial viability at this level of fine winemaking in Chile is an ever-interesting topic. Tim Atkin’s famous – and now 15-year-old – “Volvo” jibe, (that Chilean wines are like the Swedish car, dependable but dull), has finally been put to rest, Chadwick believes. “Chile is now seen as unique and attractive,” he says. But still there are doubts.
Patrick McGrath MW, managing director of Errazuriz importers Hatch Mansfield – the UK company Chadwick himself set up, in a characteristically far-sighted move, in 1994 – admits to “frustration” that “Chile is still considered as house wine category.”
“We must build an image for Chile,” he told Meininger’s. “But it will always be difficult. I am a huge admirer of Casillero del Diablo [the number-one Chilean brand in the UK], but that’s part of the problem – there is so much cheap Chilean wine about.”
Chadwick agrees. “It’s a challenge to convince the world of the quality of Chilean wine,” he says, describing the last decade as “an arid and lonely journey”.
But a fascinating journey, all the same. The vast South American continent seems to inspire its children to push the boundaries of what’s possible. As Baettig says, “Chile has stretched – the vineland used to be 500 miles from Aconcagua to Maule, and now it’s far longer” – meaning winemakers are constantly opening up new territory. Viña Ventisquero for example is making wines in the zero-rainfall Atacama Desert in the far north, and Aurelio Montes (a pioneer as driven as Chadwick) is exploring Machu Picchu in Peru.
Chadwick’s latest project is Arboleda in Aconcagua Costa, where winemaker Wladimir Medel is looking for the best Chardonnay, Syrah and Pinot Noir 12 km from the Pacific. It’s cool here – harvests can be a whole month later than in Casablanca to the south – and the schist soils help to produce wines with a fine mineral profile. And it’s brand new. “Everything here is less than 10 years old,” Medel says, surveying his empire from the windy hillside that is the Manzanar vineyard.
For a company that was founded 150 years ago, there is still a sense of newness about Errazuriz. And there is confidence as well. This is shown by the fact they “no longer follow what’s happening in California – now we use French consultants instead of American,” Medel says. Indeed, there is little of California in the racy acidity of modern Errazuriz whites, and the Bordeaux-like precision of Seña.
Has Chile’s time come? For Chadwick, the wheel has come full circle. Robert Parker is no longer dominant (the all-powerful American critic has never been a favourite with Errazuriz, and the US is only fifth in importance as a market) and a more diverse market is demanding more diverse styles.
“The world is less Parkerised. There are more critics becoming relevant, and therefore people with a preference for minerality and finesse are being heard. We made our name with good wine of quaffable quality, but that was just a step in a ladder that we continue to climb.”
