País in Chile

For centuries it was written off as a variety destined only for rustic wines, but today País is enjoying a new lease of life in southern Chile. And some much needed TLC from a few key winemakers is revealing its full potential

- DARREN SMITH

The story of País is a classic Cinderella tale. It started life as Listán Prieto, probably in the Gredos mountains of Castilla-La Mancha, central Spain. Via the conquistadores, with their missionary entourages carrying knowledge and tools for viticulture and winemaking, it travelled along the Columbian trade route, first to the Canary Islands, then the Americas.

For more than four centuries, País was a secret treasure. In homesteads throughout Chile’s southern countryside it was used to make wines known as pipeños – rustic country wines fermented in rauli pipas (open wooden lagares).

As Chile’s wine industry developed further north, País from the south was largely dismissed as a peasant variety unfit for ‘proper’ wine – too light in colour or too ‘rustic’ in character. It took a young Frenchman to set in motion a renewed appreciation of País and a revival of the south’s winemaking heritage.

THE SOUTHERN REVIVAL

Burgundian winemaker Louis-Antoine Luyt arrived in Chile in 1998, and over two decades showed that high-quality, terroir-focused País could be made with a ‘natural’ philosophy. Having studied oenology in Beaune with Mathieu Lapierre, son of Beaujolais natural wine pioneer Marcel Lapierre, the wines he made in the semi-carbonic style drew ready comparisons to those of Lapierre, Guy Breton and other newly fashionable winemakers in the Beaujolais region.