Chile Forum

Thought this would certainly get the attention of all the members (well at least most of you).

We have been talking to the small producers (few hectares) in Cauquenes where we delivered aid earlier in the week.

They are telling us that the grapes are ready to be picked, but now they have no one to pick and even if they did they have no way to pay them. The way they normally pick is in a sort of co-op labor sharing. Payment is often made through exchange of gifts like for instance they might butcher a cow and all the families share it, and all the small growers will work together to help on the harvest of the other small growers.

For all of you that like cheap Chilean wine, you should pay close attention. The reason is that those small producers often sell to the big guys, creating lots and lots of good cheap Chilean wine. Often much of the wine you buy for under 10,000 pesos in Chile falls in to this category, and does not really come from just one vineyard but from grapes bought on the open market by the big producers in a region. The more expensive reserve wines tend to come directly from the big label vineyards own vines, but the run of the mill Chilean wine comes from the small guys that say operate under 100 hectares and do not have their own production equipment.

What to do? We don't really know. We are trying to hook them up with the Mayor University in Santiago, as they were looking for a project.

Is this a "buy" tip on Gato futures?

How do you know Charles has not cornered the market with privileged inside information and this announcement is part of the corner?

Trading Places anyone

Wouldn't want to buy a pig in a poke.

I thought about organizing an allchile.net harvest party. Then I realized you guys would wipe out all the wine in the region, and there would be an even greater shortage.

admin,

I am happy to head this effort. I have been working with Cauquenes on this, as it affects me directly and I know they have some payment issues. Since they are Fairtrade certified, I have been in touch with the FT intl organizations to put some of their money back into it.
Our company helped the Fairtrade wine movement in the US get started with Cauquenes research on the topic.
We also work with 3 other FT producers in the Maule region, one of which, Vina Lautaro in Sagrada Familia, lost 6 workers who died when their houses collapsed.

We are working with them all on a daily basis and the need stretches farther. You are indeed correct about how the industry works and I cant tell you how many big name, even Reservas, come from this region with individual Cauquenes producers supplier many other top companies with top grapes.

We have helped them to achieve international fame with a few varietals that are just catching on now that only they produce in this region.

About 2 years we had this thought as well to do the pick your own concept in Chile as its huge in the US now with promoting local farming but never thought people would get into it.
In any case, the response from all of these producers is, keep selling the wine, it will help us more than anything, and thus we are trying to do more.

I'd be more than happy to spend a weekend picking grapes if there was the need/organisation....

I don't understand what happened.

If all the neighbors get together and pick everybody's grapes, what has happened to the neighbors who usually do the picking? They all died? Their grapes all burned to the ground, so they don't have to trade picking labor? They all moved to Santiago, abandoning their fields at harvest time?

The grapes are mostly Pais in the area but the ancient dry bush Carignan are also in the area, MOVI and Garage Wine Co have stepped in to assist many producers in the area, they have several weeks before the harvest must be completed. The grape once harvested will move north to wineries that can handle them.
It looks like 125 million litres or 12.5% of the wine in hand has been destroyed, Torres lost 300 barrels and many tanks, allot of concrete tanks are down and some full stainless tanks collapsed as they were never made for earthquake zones. Many of the old rebuilt adobes wineries didn’t make it through the quake, I know of one small 500,000 lt. winery that is a total write-off . As far north as the Casablanca stacked barrels were down and broken.

We just got a two boxes of wine at our office from Lomas de Cauquenes for the team that helped with the aid (thanks 4heid), and this is serious, serious, high quality wine.

SAVE THE GRAPES!!!

You have no idea what that did for moral.

We are already plotting our next rescue effort, and organizing and army to pick the grapes ourselves is a real possibility.