Chilean Wineries Need to Earthquake-Proof Their Stock

Chile is famous for wine and earthquakes, which can be a disastrous combination. Glass bottles are an all-too-vulnerable casualty of shaken earth and collapsing buildings, depriving people mourning the loss of far more important things like homes and lives even the thin comfort of drowning their sorrows in a decent red.

The Santa Rita winery, headquartered near Santiago, has buildings several centuries old, with sturdy cellars built using mortar made from eggwhite, limestone, and sand. The construction has survived tectonic abuse for its entire existence, but even it wasn't enough to protect all the wine from a massive earthquake in 2010, which at 8.8 on the Richter scale was one of the largest in modern history.

In a credit to its solid construction, the winery only lost 5 percent of its bottles. "We had a river of wine in here," said a well-groomed, crisply dressed tour guide named Mattias. "I called all my friends in and we drank off the floor."

He was kidding. I think.

One cellar, four meters underground, was designated a national monument in 1972 and still has some of its original barrels, which by now smell strongly of vinegar. Some of the old stone pillars, however, have been replaced by concrete since the earthquake tore its way through. The air is cool and pleasant, in striking contrast to the blazing sun outside in the vineyard.

The winery itself was founded in 1880 by lawyer and self-styled cowboy Domingo Fernandez, who brought in all the original equipment from France. A new owner took over a century later and focused on expansion, export, and tourism, turning Santa Rita into one of the three largest wineries in Chile—there are currently five processing centers in total scattered around the country, and seven vineyards.

The property outside Santiago has a small display demonstrating different types of grapes grown in Chile, but otherwise grows almost exclusively cabernet sauvignon. The valley is surrounded by hills, preserving a hot climate with colder nights, supporting grapes that need more time to mature on the vine. In January, the thick, woody vines are starting to burst with immature green bunches of grapes, which will be ready for harvest between February and May.

The grape rows are fronted with red rose bushes, planted as proverbial canaries that will be hit first by any impending blight, giving the growers time to protect the vines if possible. Chile's geography, surrounded by the Andes, the Atacama Desert, and the Pacific Ocean, has so far resisted any major plagues or blights, but you can never be too careful.

Not present at this vineyard, but flourishing at another nearby is the carménère grape, a variety with a reddish tint to the leaves which was believed to be wiped out during a grape plague in 1860s France. It wasn't until 1994 that a researcher discovered it growing in Chile, where producers had assumed it was a type of merlot for the previous 150 years.

White wines, on the other hand, tend to be grown in valleys closer to the sea like Casablanca, which have more minerals in the soil.

The wine cellar processes grapes picked at several of the nearby vineyards. Mattias led us into the fermentation room, where a row of giant 20,000- to 50,000-liter steel tanks lines a pathway, the air heavy with the sweet smell of wine. White wine is given 15 days, while red wine gets 30 to marinate properly, skins and all. "The tannins are going to give you complexity, texture, color, astringency," he says.

After fermentation is the barreling process. In an adjoining cellar to the national monument, this one supported by wooden pillars holding classic light sconces, are row after row of wooden barrels still in use. Mattias unplugs a bunghole to offer a sniff of chardonnay.

The barrels are reused three times for different tiers of wine. First, for specialty wines, which are aged 15 to 19 months. Then the same barrel is used to age gran reserves for ten to 15 months. Finally, the more common reserve wines are aged for six to ten months. After that, the barrels are sold to make lower-quality wines, pisco, or furniture.

In yet another cellar are stacks of thousands upon thousands of bottled premium wines, aging an additional 6 to 12 months. Many are covered in dust. They are stacked on their side both to help keep the cork moist as well as to reduce the risk of catastrophe should another strong earthquake strike the area.

Finally, the wines are ready to drink. Mattias led us to one final cellar, this one with its own bit of unique history.

In 1814, Chilean patriots rebelling against Spain were routed in the south in a battle known as Rancagua's disaster. On their retreat, 120 of the surviving Chileans were given food and shelter in a basement on the property, which predates the winery. The rebellion was put down, and the Chilean forces didn't successfully kick the Spanish out for good until 1826. One of the winery's flagship brands, 120, is named after the Chilean soldiers who took refuge here.

Today, instead of weary patriots licking their wounds, the room holds many years worth of premium wines, kept behind bars for security. "Now it's more like a wine prison," Mattias says.

We liberated as much as we could drink during the tasting. Curiously, I later learned that some residents of the valley prefer to use high-quality bottles to make a kind of sangria—sugar and strawberries in the red, sugar and peaches in the pink. To each their own. I suppose it can get tiresome drinking the same premium wine day in and day out.

Chileans are spoiled when it comes to wine. Earthquakes, not so much.