"I am always telling my friends there that "I believe in Chile more than you do,' " Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle says.
That's a bragging right some Chileans willingly cede to a charming Frenchwoman who calls their country a second home. Perhaps other wine drinkers will believe it sooner from someone whose family - yes, those quite grand Marniers - owns the premier chateau in Sancerre, France, and has its name on the distillery of that 100-year-old liqueur and one of Chile's most successful vineyards.
Marnier-Lapostolle's Chilean wines are too rich to stay in the bargain bin and sell strictly as a "good value" $5 wine. Lapostolle wines start at $10, and the best are $20 and up. And it's only high-grade wine she exports to France.
The price dilemma faces all emerging winemaking countries. They enter the world market with wines between $3 and $7 but don't want to stay there. The rare $50 wine is a curiosity that attracts few customers.
Chile played that game for too long, producing heavy tonnages of grapes for merlot and chardonnay that were low-cost and drinkable. But Marnier-Lapostolle wanted more: quality wine that could command $20 and last in the cellar. And so did others.
"I went there to make good wine, not to make a good business" on lower costs of land and labor, she says. The family had two well-established labels in Sancerre and Grand Marnier. Making Chilean wine would be her challenge.
She's not the only outsider. In the last 20 years, the Mondavis, Rothschilds and other Bordeaux names have begun operations in Chile. And Chile has its own quality-conscious vintners: Montes, Cousino Macul, Errazuriz and Veramonte (started by Agustin Huneeus, who led Concha y Toro in Chile and then Franciscan Estates in Napa).
They were right. Consumers who look beyond cheapies and give Chilean wines time and respect will be repaid with bigger bargains:
* Up the ante. Spend $15 or more and you'll see that Chile's best names make wines with as much flavor and polish as many Bordeaux.
* Let the wine sit 10 to 15 minutes, shake off the tannins, and you can almost taste it ripen; the whites can be as full and lush as the reds.
* Pay attention as wineries sort out Chile's regions. The main valleys stacked north to south are Aconcagua, Casablanca, Maipo, Rapel and Curico. Smaller appellations in the Rapel, especially Colchagua Valley and Apalta Valley, are new top sources of reds.
* Experiment with varieties. Chile does superbly with Bordeaux's cabernet, merlot and sauvignon blanc, but chardonnay is a struggle. Syrah, the rare plummy carmenere and dessert whites will star.
Chile's success starts with a wine tradition that dates back several centuries. That heritage is so European that some vineyards descend from grapes imported before France's 19th century phylloxera epidemic, including carmenere. Called the lost grape of Bordeaux, carmenere survives only in Chile, where it was mistaken for a merlot for many years.
For years the potential for quality was hidden by Chile's success with quantity. With sunshine as regular as California's (1998 was the only terrible vintage), easy irrigation and no pruning, vineyards produced big yields, but the grapes were watery and the flavor thin.
Chile's new guard changed that emphasis. "When I came down looking for land, I knew there were grapes here from pre-phylloxera," Marnier-Lapostolle says. "But all the vineyards they showed me were very productive. That's not what I wanted."
She prefers terrain that stresses vines and produces fewer grapes but more concentrated flavor. She found it in a 60-year-old vineyard in Atalpa that no longer had a canal. "The soil was poor, the vines were old. It was the first time I saw low yields," she says.
The result 10 years later are hers and Chile's best wines.
Chris Sherman, who writes about food and wine for the St. Petersburg Times, is the author of "The Buzz on Wine" Lebhar-Friedman Books, $16.95. He can be reached at (727) 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com
