A Super, Natural Selection
IT WAS DARK WHEN we drove up to the home of winemaker Roberto Henríquez in the Bío Bío region of central Chile. I had pink granitic sand in my shoes from a day spent touring Roberto’s vineyards. I was jet-lagged, thirsty, starving, and grateful to find his chef friend grilling a fish that had been in the nearby ocean that morning. My travel buddy, a Brooklyn-based sommelier named Alex Alan, sat down and asked for a corkscrew. Wine was poured. I spooned chunky porotos granados, a traditional stew made with fresh cranberry beans, onto my plate. “What’s that spice?” I asked, marveling at an unfamiliar smokiness. “Merkén,” Roberto said. It’s a spice used by Chile’s indigenous Mapuche people, he explained. Made with goat horn pepper, merkén tasted like smoked paprika raised to the fifth power. Note to self: Bring some home.
Near midnight, as we sat in Roberto’s kitchen with our Chilean feast, he started to pour wine after wine. Down the hatch went his electric, worthy wines that burst with life. There were wines in different shades of amber and red, perfumed and vibrant, ethereal yet structured. And finally, the wine most closely associated with the country’s natural wine revolution, the easy-to-drink pipeño, a red farmer’s wine made from país, one of Chile’s oldest grapes.
For years, Chile and natural wines—additive-free wines made from organic or biodynamically grown grapes—were words I longed to stitch together. But I despaired that the country would ever cast off its reputation for making wine as predictable (and as unnatural) as Wonder Bread. Such a
