“It was a wonderful harvest … 2018 was everything that you could wish for to make wines that were fully ripe but have a lot of elegance and freshness.” “It was a late vintage because it was fresh during the fall, and we had a couple of small rains again – less than 20mm of rainfall during harvest – so we did not need to irrigate the old vines at all, and very little the new vines,” Leon said.
“It was like a Christmas gift from Santa, and nature was generous enough to give it all,” said Andrea Leon, the winemaker for Lapostolle and Clos Apalta, who recalled that the winter of that year was sufficiently cool and wet with good moisture, followed by a moderate spring and summer. Francisca Palacios, the new-generation winemaker at Odfjell Vineyards, commented that each vintage seems to have become more challenging to the point that “we don’t know what to expect anymore.”īut 2018 was a real treat from Mother Nature, with the wines showing remarkable stature and balance. A few winemakers we talked to said they were now prepared for continuously capricious weather, given the realities of climate change. Several Chilean winemakers consider 2018 to be a top vintage, following in the wake of a warm, dry 2017 and a cool, wet 2016.
THE NEWEST VINTAGE: A TREAT FROM MOTHER NATURE