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1994 · Chile

Chile discovers its Merlot is Carménère

A variety thought lost after phylloxera turned out to have been growing in Chile for over a century, mislabelled.

What happened

Carménère was one of the original Bordeaux varieties and was largely not replanted after phylloxera, being difficult to ripen and prone to poor fruit set. It was widely presumed extinct as a commercial variety.

In 1994 the French ampelographer Jean-Michel Boursiquot, visiting Chile, identified vines being grown and sold as Merlot as being Carménère. Chilean plantings had come from Bordeaux before phylloxera and the two had been confused ever since.

Chile formally recognised it as a distinct variety in 1998, and it has since become the country’s signature grape.

The mistake had a practical dimension beyond identity: Carménère ripens considerably later than Merlot, so vineyards picked on a Merlot schedule were being harvested underripe, which is why the wines had shown such marked green character.

How firmly this is dated

Documented. Recorded contemporaneously. The date is not in question.

Ampelographic identification in 1994, subsequently confirmed by DNA analysis and by Chilean regulatory recognition in 1998.

People: Jean-Michel Boursiquot

What people get wrong

Corrections this event bears on directly.

Oversimplified

“Chile never had phylloxera, so its vines are the original ungrafted European stock.”

Chile has largely escaped phylloxera and much of its vineyard is ungrafted, which is genuinely unusual. That does not make its vines a preserved nineteenth-century snapshot.

What this follows from, and leads to

A timeline is a list; these are the links between its entries.

1990s onwards

DNA analysis rewrites grape genealogy

Genetic testing overturned centuries of assumptions about where grape varieties came from.

1863–1900s

The phylloxera crisis

An American aphid destroyed most of Europe's vineyards, and grafting onto American rootstock was the eventual solution.

1550s–2000s

Chilean wine from conquest to export

Spanish mission vines, then a nineteenth-century French graft, then an export industry built in thirty years.

Sources

Sources consulted

Along the timeline

Before · 1988–2020s

English sparkling wine finds its ground

Chalk, a warming climate and the traditional method turned a hobby industry into a serious one.

After · 1990s onwards

DNA analysis rewrites grape genealogy

Genetic testing overturned centuries of assumptions about where grape varieties came from.

← Full timeline