Kiwi talent gives Chile vintage lift

By Kevin Sinclair

SANTIAGO - In the shadow of the Andes, a talented young New Zealander has made the first wine of the new millennium.

Brett Jackson, chief winemaker at the largest single vineyard in South America, has beaten every other vintner to the punch with his San Pedro Vintage 2000.

Meanwhile, in a lush valley 100km to the north, another young Kiwi oenologist is at the spearhead of Chile's bid to stamp its ownership on a classical French grape that has been "lost" for a century.

Debbie Christensen, still in her 20s, is winemaker at the multi-million dollar space age MontGras winery, where she heads a cellar team of 30 people producing wines that are wowing the world.

Why are these two oenologists and other talented New Zealanders working in the Curico and Rapel Valleys of Chile and not in Marlborough or Gisborne?

Mr Jackson strides through some of the 1200ha of the giant San Pedro vineyards, past enormous outdoor fermenting tanks that look like a stainless steel skyline, and says: "I'd never get this opportunity in New Zealand."

Debbie Christensen agrees. She is preparing to make her second vintage in Chile. It is largely up to her to decide what style and flavour will go into MontGras wines that retail worldwide.

She was one of the first winemakers to put a wine made from the carmenere grape into global cellars. This is the legendary "lost grape of Bordeaux." Lost once, maybe, but now discovered again in Chile where the dark purple fruity wine is fast becoming a national grape.

In the 1890s, the dreaded louse phylloxera devastated winelands in Europe, North America and Australia. New Zealand did not escape.

The only place where vines were not destroyed was Chile.

French winemakers imported by wealthy landowners planted every classical Bordeaux grape. These included a popular grape called carmenere, commonly used in France to give flavour and softness to cabernet sauvignon.

Similar to merlot, over the years, carmenere grape vines were mistakenly planted alongside. It was not until 1993 that a French professor did a survey of Chile's vineyards and discovered that much of the country's merlot plantings were really carmenere.

"Instead of grieving, the Chileans made individual wines from the carmenere," Debbie Christensen explains. It turned out to be a wonderful, soft, tasty wine.

"I'm here at a time when a forgotten grape is being hailed as the new signature wine of Chile."

She worked on her first vintage in Grove Mill, Marlborough, rolling barrels in the cellar, digging ditches and other normal chores. Then she went abroad to learn, at Challone winery in California, then back to Hawkes Bay and abroad again, to Switzerland.

"I had heard of young New Zealanders in the Chilean wine industry," she explains.

"I wanted to learn Spanish. I came, and got this job. It was a tough challenge."

She survived a rugged first vintage, learning as she oversaw the crush, and in charge of 30 workers at a modern winery.

In Curico, Mr Jackson has bottled the first wine of the new millennium at Vina San Pedro.

It is the largest and most modern winery in South America, with $US50 million ($102.35 million) invested in 1997 and 1998. The 12,000sq m winery has an annual capacity of 52 million litres.

Mr Jackson sought grapes in a near-desert vineyard 1600km to the north. These were picked and crushed in the third week of January. After fermenting in stainless steel, the fruit was bottled in the middle of this month.

Early next month, with all 6000 cases sold to enthusiastic distributors, the wine will be drunk in Japan and Germany.

"You couldn't do that in New Zealand," Mr Jackson laments.

He made his first vintage at Stonyridge Vineyards on Waiheke Island in 1990 but he knew he had to travel to learn.

Over the next few years he worked in wineries in California's Napa Valley, at the trend-setting Thelema Mountain Winery in Stellenbosch and in Epernay, the heart of Champagne, and in the south of France.

But it was in Chile, under the blazing sun in the Curico valley, that he put down roots in 1994.

Both young oenologists have an identical dream. They want to return to New Zealand, invest in their own land and grow their own wine.

But the opportunities in New Zealand are restricted. That is why they are setting down deep roots in vineyards overseas.