Vines arrived with the conquistadors — País was planted from the 1550s for the mass and the table — but modern Chile dates from the 1850s, when landowners imported cuttings from Bordeaux on the eve of phylloxera. The louse never followed: fenced off by the Andes, the Atacama and the ocean, Chile still farms ungrafted vines of pre-phylloxera genetics, a living archive Europe lost.
The Central Valley runs south from Santiago between the Andes and the coastal range, its alluvial soils irrigated by mountain meltwater. Maipo, Colchagua and the Apalta bend are its most famous names, Cabernet Sauvignon its backbone — and Carmenère, long confused with Merlot in the vineyards until it was identified in the 1990s, has found its second homeland here after nearly vanishing from Bordeaux.