Chilean surprises

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

Taking a break over the weeked to celebrate my father’s birthday, this delightful bottle was opened.

Casas del Bosque was a Sauvignon Blanc from the Casablanca Valley of the Valparaiso Region of Chile.

For me, there are two really interesting aspects to Chilean wine. The first is that while the main European influence in Chile is Spanish, their wine typically has a very French flair. When the Chilean people visited Europe, they fell in love with French wines and brought vines back with them. This helped Chile become a repository for French grape varieties that ended up being hard hit in Europe by phylloxera. Which leads me to the second really interesting thing about Chile. The country has never been hit with an outbreak of phylloxera so as a result the grapes are not grafted onto more resistant rootstocks.

The Casas del Bosque Sauvignon Blanc shows that French influence. It smelled of grass and tasted of piquant grapefruit that was so initially strong that I said, “GRAPEFRUIT!” when Kevin asked me what I thought of it. In all fairness, while the citrus flavor it was strong it did give way to raspberry and a slightly tart (under ripe) peach. Overall it was very pleasant and I would go out of my way to find it again.

Tags: Chile, Grapefruit, Sauvingnon Blanc

This entry was posted on March 12, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Gretchen Neuman, Kevin Neuman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.