Limarí cements position as a top place in Chile for Chardonnay

Chile’s Limarí Valley is cementing its reputation as one the greatest places for Chardonnay in the world as both Santa Rita and Concha y Toro shift 100% of their sourcing to this northerly coastal region for their top whites.

Concha y Toro vineyards in Limarí. Picture source: Concha y Toro

Significantly, Santa Real’s Medalla Real Chardonnay, which retails for around £12 in the UK, is now made entirely from grapes grown in Limarí, having shifted its sourcing from Leyda from the 2017 vintage.

Similarly, Concha y Toro’s Emiliana Chardonnay, which sells for approximately the same price, is also moving its grape supplies to Limarí from the 2017 vintage, having previously used fruit from Casablanca.

With the same company’s Marques de Casa Concha Chardonnay (RRP approx £13) already using grapes from just the Limarí Valley, Concha y Toro technical director Marcelo Papa told db in Santiago last week that all the group’s “top whites” were now made using Chardonnay exclusively from this Chilean wine region.

Also speaking to db in Chile last week, Sebastián Labbé, ‘premium and ultra premium winemaker’ of Viña Santa Rita, said that from now on the group would be using only Chardonnay from Limarí for its finest whites.

“We have just bottled our Medalla Real Chardonnay 2017, which is now 100% Limarí fruit, and I think it’s a very smart move, although logistically it is more difficult [than sourcing grapes from Leyda, which previously accounted for at least 80% of the Chardonnay for this particular white wine].”

In terms of stylistic impact, he said that the Limarí Chardonnay produces a wine that is “more elegant with a slightly grippy, bitter edge, so it is more serious,” although he added that the new sourcing will force Santa Rita “to sacrifice a bit of volume”, and incur greater production costs.

While Labbé praised the quality of Chardonnay from Leyda, he said that no other region in Chile produced the same combination of qualities found in Limarí, which he described as a “rich texture” along with an “elegant high acidity”, telling db, “I couldn’t believe the quality of the fruit just from tasting the grapes.”

Comparing the results from Limarí to other great sources of Chardonnay around the world, he said that tastings have shown that the Chilean wine region can produce white wines to rival the crus of Burgundy in quality – if not the top crus – but stylistically produced something fuller than found in France, and more comparable to California’s Russian River Valley AVA, within Sonoma County.

“The volume we get in Limarí is richer than Burgundy, and we think it’s more like the Chardonnay from Russian River, for example, the wines from Williams Selyem, which have viscosity and freshness,” he recorded.

While Labbé is not the first winemaker to compare the Chardonnays from Limarí to those of Sonoma, his observations were doubtless informed by a technical trip to the US wine region last year with fellow Santa Rita Estates winemakers Marcos Fernandez and Emily Faulconer.

This year, he said that the same triumvirate will be heading to Burgundy to learn more about winemaking techniques with Chardonnay.

Making Limarí distinctive, particularly for Chardonnay, is its rare combination of cool, arid conditions, along with a unique soil type for Chilean viticulutral regions – crucially, this valley in the north of the country contains a sedimentary marine terrace (Chile’s wine areas mostly have volcanic origins and contain no limestone).

It is Limarí’s limestone content that reduces vine vigour, bringing richness to the Chardonnays, while also helping to retain water within the soils, and, it is believed, producing grapes with a higher acid content, boosting the sensation of freshness in the resulting wines, along with their capacity for ageing.

Notably, Limarí has also become an area renowned for finer wines made from Chardonnay along with Pinot Noir and Syrah because a lack of water in this part of Chile, which has ensured that the supply of grapes is limited, and therefore only used for the production of top end wines.

“Because there is a strain on the water supply in Limarí nobody is doing cheap wine, so, if you are going to go there, you must be at the top, which means that nobody is polluting the name, all the producers there are doing really distinct things,” said Andrés Lavados, CEO of Viña Santa Rita.

With average rainfall levels in Limarí as low as 100mm a year, the region is dependent on irrigation to keep the vines alive and produce a vintage, but a lack of precipitation in the region, and therefore snowfall in the Andes, has severely restricted the supply of water for vineyards in past five years.

Indeed, as reported by db back in 2015, growers were being forced to choose which vines to water, and leave their least valuable plots to die in the arid conditions.

However, Labbé said that rainfall along with snowfall in the Andes in 2017 was “fasntastic”, ensuring enough water supply for Limarí for at least the next three years. During a period of drought from 2012 to 2016, Santa Rita had to bring water by pipe to the area from 8km away, because the wells on the property had dried out.

“We probably have a secure water supply for as many as four years now but there is still a high risk that we will face the same shortages in five to seven years time,” he commented.

As a result, Lavados added that Santa Rita owns an additional 300 hectares of bare land in Limarí, but “doesn’t dare” plant it.

While he said that the region’s biggest producers – Concha y Toro with its Maycas de Limarí brand, and Tabalí – had been forced to abandon some of their vineyards in 2015, he said that the vines were still alive.

“Amazingly, many of the vines survived three years without water,” he recorded, suggesting that the vine is even hardier than many in Chile had previously thought.

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