fitting chilean wine into the ambient, the affective
For most wine lovers, wine is often the most veracious intermediary to the spirit of a distant culture. Wine provides a temporary intimacy with that culture, a cognizance. This is an essential need of ours as human beings, as Westerners, particularly—we often neglect to step into the wisps of beauty, to settle into the visceral affects offered by life’s chromatism. And so wine reminds us. It reminds us to settle into the affects of time spent with friends, loved ones; the affects of the landscape in which we find ourselves. It reminds us to step into the wisps of a beautiful day, into the tease of temperamental weather, and to simply be . And to simply experience being.
Recently, as a fall day of indecisive temperature receded and the ambient feeling mellowed with dropping temperatures and a softening sky, a glass of wine by a favorite Chilean winemaker reminded me to decelerate; to consciously feel the wavering atmosphere, to step into the beauty offered by late-blooming flowers, to settle into the colorful process of preparing a meal- a fluid, casual joint effort. This is how wine becomes that veracious intermediary: we think of the ways and virtues of Chilean culture as incredibly chromatic, vibrant, but somehow languid. Chileans’ ancestry of Spanish, Latin Indians, and Western Europeans has made for a culture built on appreciation for the experiential; the beauty, the affects. True, parts of Chile are marked by lifetimes of rural work; the ardor of cowboys and agriculture and long days. But there is also an intelligent love for life. A love and fervor for the beautiful yields of the land and for the human lives that shaped them; a simplistic notion, but intelligent indeed.
Wines of Chile are of course among the most colorful components of life in that culture. I have been privy to very many Chilean wines, which have been converging into consistent quality—increasingly outstanding--, and many are truly just wisps of beauty, breaths of color, those veracious intermediaries indeed to the land from which they came. There is little pretension emanating from the oenological culture of Chile. Cono Sur is one winery that has excelled in quality, in purity; it has excelled in signaling necessary appreciation for the wine in itself—just a thing, a thing meant for ephemeral use and enjoyment—and then an appreciation of the complex breadth of life-giving vines. Cono Sur primarily crafts varietals blended from a combination of vineyards, with the exception of the Vision line of single-vineyard wines; there are 10 appellations from which the grapes are sourced. The insignia of the winery itself is a bicycle, believed by Cono Sur to epitomize ‘expressive, relaxed, joyful’ ways and means. With this, there is the Bicycle line of wines; they are stunningly pretty, expressive, and balanced. These wines are ridiculously worthy of a heftier pricetag, but instead maintain one that is extremely modest. (Around $8-10). Cono Sur additionally produces the finer 20 Barrels and Reserva lines, as well Ocio, an uber-fine line of cool climate pinot noirs. Beyond the proven merits of the simple Bicycle wines, the quality only appreciates in their other labels.
Ah, and also the christening of some new Riedel glasses. Yes, the inaugural enjoyment of these went to a nine dollar wine. What an invocative, captivating wine though—Cono Sur’s Bicycle carmenere bottling. Just what a Chilean carmenere should be: sweet dark fruits, lush blackberry notes; emergent aromas and flavors of tobacco and chocolate, deep and mesmeric. Complexity is not compromised; the carmenere is spiced and warm but appropriately balanced with acidic freshness and just the equalizing amount of tannin grip. A real step into a wisp of beauty, a real reminder of the beauty inherent in the habits of life.
As traditional Bordelaise grapes often have, carmenere traversed from Bordeaux to shine elsewhere. Chile produces large quantities of the grape to shine on its own or in blends. Historically, carmenere contributed the six grape Bordeaux blend (petit verdot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, malbec). In Chile, the brilliant sunlight and checkered earth make for incredibly expressive carmeneres, typically in much more forward, bold New World styles. Necessarily [and opposingly], though, Chilean wine is characterized by its rejection of haughtiness, of stringent pedigree; instead, more of an egalitarian perspective of wine culture. That is, the very antithesis of Bordeaux. The honor for life and the fervor in appreciation for organic beauty ingrained in the lifestyles of Chileans is captured by the Cono Sur winemakers; and there is even obvious allusion to the rejection of exclusivity like that of Bordeaux in the Cono Sur mantra: ‘no family trees, no dusty bottles, just quality wine’. And truly, for pure pleasure, pure settling into the affects of a typical day of fall and good food and good company, what else in a wine would one really need?
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