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Richards exploring Miguel Torres' terraced vineyards in Empedrado, Coastal Maule
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Santiago, November 2007. Freelance British wine writer and author Peter Richards can’t get enough of this long strip of a country at the ends of the earth. Less than a year after the release of his successful and comprehensive book “Wines of Chile” (ed. Mitchell Beazley), Richards returned for a whirlwind trip from one end of Chile’s wine country to the other, from Elqui in the north to Malleco in the south.
“I want to explore the new terroir projects,” he said when we met him at Miguel Torres’ unique slate-filled Empedrado vineyards in coastal Maule. “This has been a great trip so far. I’m constantly writing about Chile, so this is a good opportunity to update my information, but I wanted to focus primarily on what’s new.”
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By his own confession, Richards likes getting his hands dirty in the vineyard. His face lit up as he declared “I love looking at holes and squirting acid on rocks.” Clearly he’d been spending time with Viña De Martino’s chief winemaker Marcelo Retamal, an inveterate acid-squirter.
Chile’s “Doctor Terroir” Pedro Parra was in on the fun too, as were Adolfo Hurtado (Cono
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Peter Richards chats with Margaret Snook at a "well-irrigated" Chilean barbecue in the Maule Valley
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Sur), Marcelo Papa (Concha y Toro), Felipe Tosso (Ventisquero), Felipe de Solminihac (Sol de Sol), and a number of other committed terroir-hunting winegrowers and winemakers.
Richards began his expedition in the north and had already visited Alto Elqui, Limarí, Choapa, Casablanca, Coastal Maipo, Coastal Cachapoal, and Apalta-Colchagua when we met up with him in Maule on the fifth day of his weeklong trip. There, in addition to Coastal Maule, he would visit the Serengeti-like Caliboro in inner Maule before heading on to chilly Bío Bío and Malleco during his remaining two days on the road, giving him a privileged overview of the Chile’s extensive wine country. Few international wine writers ever explore beyond the central and most accessible regions.
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