Artículo #107
Heritage and Culture of the winegrowers, vines and wines of Chile
During the last years, it has generated a great interest among the academics –of social sciences, in general, and of historiography, in particular- the study about the concept of cultural identity, what is usually illustrated, in a cultural way, as the traditional group of values, behavior, beliefs and symbols to the interior of a social system that acts as a blending among the people that form it, in such a way that it is identified by its components as the substratum that originates the sense of mutual pertinence and cohesion among complementary, supplementary or even antagonistic entities, but that share essentially the same cultural codes, like rules, rituals or certain patrimonial elements. Within that frame, what is understood by cultural heritage is the group of goods, material or immaterial, that have been inherited by a specific nation, with those who are being built and that will be acquired by future generations, where the social group in its vast majority is the one that recognizes in such patrimony an exceptional esthetic, symbolic and historical relevance. In these general conceptual terms, it is precise that, for the effects of this chapter, the interesting part is specifically those implications that the historical development of viticulture has had for the construction of the identity and national heritage of Chile as a wine producer country. By virtue of this point of view, it has to be considered that, firstly, according to all the registers that today are available in the histography, we are experiencing a phenomenon with much information, which dates back to the arrival of the first Spanish conquerors, a time when the first wine arbors were introduced around 1540 and 1550, what shows that from the first years of the Hispanic settlement the wine was present, not only as a necessary element for the ceremony, but also for dissipating the thirst of the new inhabitants. During these first decades, in almost all the plots of land of the city of Santiago of the New Extreme and its bordering small farms, there were vine arbors and it was produced wine for the domestic consumption. With the passage of time, this practice spread throughout the territory, from Coquimbo to Concepción and, in 1594, the ecclesiastic registers show that around 100,000 arrobas were produced in the country annually, equivalent to 1,600 million liters of wine. During the Colonial period, the price of this beverage maintained considerably stable (about 20 reales per each arroba, unit equivalent to 35.5 current liters) and it were only registered sporadic rises, as a result of eventual bad harvests or of the Arauco War that affected the production in the South of the territory. As regards how this condition of wine producer region has affected the Chilean identity, it is precise to consider a series of aspects related to the process of nationality formation. In general terms, it is known that the Chilean identity has experienced stages that commonly associate with the great periods of this history: the discovery and conquer of the territory, the following colonization of what is usually referred to as “Chilean Central Valley†and the Independence Revolution, with the consequent beginning of the Republic Era, marked by the territorial and economic expansion during the 19th century and by the democratic institutional construction during the 20th century. So, it could be wondered: How important has the wine been in this identity construction? In a great number of academic studies published in recent years in the country, it has been strengthened the idea of a great viticulture influence in the historical development of the heritage and cultural identity, an importance that not only would fit strictly in the agricultural field or around the characteristics of the rural world, but also would have transcended to other spheres that form the social system.
Texto destacado
The silent work, and a few times documented, of the winegrowers, had important repercussions in the diffusion of more hygienic customs among the population; as the dynamics of a cyclic agriculture, unlike the great extensive tasks, it made the liberation of workers possible, during a long period of time of the year, diversifying the cultural instances to the interior of the rural world.
During the course of the colonial centuries, the vine cultivation originated a nation identified by the landscape of the Central Valley, an affiliation that thanks to this activity, more than others, gradually rooted in its geography. Additionally, it is important to emphasize that through the systematic production of wines, it may also be seen an incipient feature linked to a self-determination conscience in front of the systematic prohibitions of cultivating new vineyards out of Spain.
Given the characteristics inherent in the vine cultivation, widely recognized not only for their historical, but also educational significance, it can be said that the existence of this activity in Chile motivated gradually a detailed work knowledge, a closeness between the man, the land and the nature cycles, that with the passage of the colonial decades it contributed in an important way to the construction of our identity as a nation.
At the end of the colonial period, the viticulture development had marked notable differences between the Chilean society and the rest of the Hispanic American societies, mainly with respect to the early appearance of the small free owner. This figure marked a certain local difference as regards the spread privileges system of the nobility, characteristic of the Spanish world, in which the mechanism of the will of lands for services rendered to the Crown resulted the principal conformation way of an oligarchic society highly stratified and disposed in hierarchies, that found its greatest splendor in those colonies where it was developed a highly extensive agriculture, as it is the case of products like the cotton, coffee and sugar, among others.
Opposite to this, the intensive exploitation of the fruit lands in general, and vine growing in general, marked a rupture with this system, presenting an alternative due to the lack of lands out of the aristocratic property. The wine generated, in the course of the 18th century, an incipient domestic industry that boosted the commercial entrepreneurships of the artisans (as blacksmiths, glassworkers, carpenters, grocers and coopers) and diverse professions that in the viticultural area could go from the simple pruner to the specialized vine grower, without avoiding the very important appearance that the muleteers of the Andes had in the transportation of such goods. A kind of industrial “cluster†that, even at a much reduced scale, was also relevant for the construction of a society which institutional quality and order were distinctive seals from the beginning of the independent life, even when it does not have to be avoided the fact that in this self-defining construction process they excluded completely the least benefited classes, a highly heterogeneous group that has frequently been associated, reasonably, to suffering characteristic of the utterly poor situation in which it was stuck during the whole Colonial period, a situation that would start to improve from the constitutional reform of 1925.
The silent work, and a few times documented, of the vine growers, had important repercussions in the diffusion of more hygienic customs among the population; as the dynamics of a cyclic agriculture, unlike the great extensive tasks, it made the liberation of workers possible, during a long period of time of the year, diversifying the cultural instances to the interior of the rural and estate world, exhibiting the emergence of a historical subject that is closely related to the construction of the Chilean viticultural heritage, an inheritance that goes from monumental constructions and big public works to anonymous legends and poetry that still survive in the country and villages of the traditional valleys.
The esthetic beauty of the colonial vineyard is another crucial element to consider. It caused an impression of austere elegance to the Chilean scenery while it contributed to mold a gentle character in men and women in an environment always marked by serenity, a picture where the vine arbor appears like a festive and family environment in the threshold between the private and the public, where there are the most varied episodes, from religious celebrations to business conversations.
In this sense, the image of the vineyard is the symbol of the agricultural prosperity par excellence. Associated, from the beginning of the colonial times, to an elegant picture, in the vineyard we see a group of elements characteristic of a world of very powerful symbolic significance that has experienced practically the whole history, not only as a component characteristic of the prestigious noble, but also as a widespread proposal among the average owners of the Central Valley as a symbol of a higher status. In general terms, the viticulture, considered as cultural construct, has demonstrated to be able to promote not only models of more industrialized development, but also “socially more equal, and politically more stableâ€.1 The interaction between nature and culture has acquired, through this old activity, more complex and diverse forms than the dichotomy many times exposed among a society of landowners on the one hand, and laborers on the other.
On the contrary, the vine made possible the appearance of what could be referred to as “medium sectorsâ€, not exactly a class given that we do not see the correspondence of defined ideals nor the confluence of declared objectives, but we do see a group of agricultural small-sized businessmen which social discipline shows clearly the influence of the viticulture and its most outstanding characteristics. The definite break of this system would begin to experience from the first years of republican life.
The procedures brought by the Spanish conquerors for the wine production did not change too much until the first decades of the 19th century. The situation started to change the air as a direct result of the process of modernization and spread of the Chilean economy, linked to the business opening with the nations of the North Atlantic from the decade of 1840, the export of raw material to the industrialized world and the incorporation of enormous American and English capitals from the second half of the century.
The consolidation of ValparaÃso as one of the most important ports of the South Pacific, the spread of the area of irrigated hectares in the Central Zone with the construction of new canals, the arrival of European scientists and engineers, the creation of banks and the emergence of the credit, the development and use of steam as energy in the land transportation with the arrival of the railways, the new industrial machineries and the urban growth, among many other factors, created the right conditions for the diversification of business and of the economy. In this way, it was originated a group of mining businessmen and traders, coming, most of them, from groups of European immigrants and some members of the traditional elite who promoted a transcendental change in the viticultural activity.
An external factor that facilitated this task was the phylloxera pest that affected the European and American vineyards, and left many of the best European specialists with no temporary job, who were available for being hired in Chile. On the other hand, the business firms started to import agro-industrial machinery, transport systems and they dedicated to the building of underground wineries that allowed a better preservation of the wine. Some barrels from the United States and France were shipped to the country due to the requirements of enologists and French technicians hired by the new vineyards, events that at the same time motivated with prosperity to the national manufacture of distillers and filters in the National Boiler Shop and in “Fundición Las Rosasâ€, as well as bottles and other containers in the National Factory of Glass.
As regards the introduction of new vines, principally French, this initiative is usually connected with Silvestre OchagavÃa around 1851, however, the truth of this issue is a little more complex in the documents.
Del Pozo (1997) has stated that the incorporation process of French vines had started at least ten years before, between 1830 and 1850, a period in which there had been introduced about 70 grape varieties, which were settled in the Agricultural Experimental Plant of Santiago, known later as Quinta Normal de Agricultura 3. In those days, the Plant was under the direction of the Genoese Juan Sada and among the most outstanding helpers it was the French naturalist Claudio Gay. It has also made reference to the priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Quilpué, who, at the beginning of 1850 had begun the import and cultivation of new vines in the Aconcagua valley.
Now, even when the adaptation process of new vines had started before (in fact, Del Pozo also attributes the introduction of some French varieties to the enologists Nourrichet and Poutays between 1845 and 1848 5), it is from 1851 when the Chilean viticulture starts to develop significant changes that would transform it almost completely, the year when Silvestre OchagavÃa brought personally to the country vines for vinification also from France.
The year 1877 marks the beginning of the viticultural exports to Europe, consolidating with that a long process of almost half a century that had began in the decade of 1830 with the first imports of European aristocratic vines. In 1880, the viticultural industry was in the middle of the peak, in virtue of which the Chilean wines were taken to compete in Europe in the exhibitions of Bordeaux in 1882, Liverpool in 1885 and Paris in 1889, with very good results. The Chilean wine got another presence and the production increased considerably, at the same time that the commercialization and transport systems became more efficient, allowing in 1883 the existence of a group of ten “big†Chilean vineyards that exported to Europe, apart from other South American capitals, like Buenos Aires and Lima.
The French Paradigm
Other fruitful attempts during the same period were the ones boosted by the businessmen, José Urmeneta, close to Limache, and Maximiano Errázuriz in the estate of Panquehue, during the decade of 1870. Both of them introduced vine shoots of Pinot, Côt (Malbec), Cabernet and Gamet vines for the red wines, and Semillón, Moscatel and Sauvignon for the white ones. Viña Santa Ana, formed by Francisco Undurraga in the Province of Talagante, was planted that same year with Pinot and Cabernet, and German vines, principally Riesling.
Another aspect to emphasize as regards the transformation process of the national viticultural production is related to the topic that, in those years, a great quantity of the most important agricultural products that were cultivated in Chile, suffered a strong depreciation and, in a similar way to what happened in France, the profits that could be obtained through the vine cultivation experienced a significant expansive cycle. As a reference, there are registers that prove that, for the decade 1890-1900, the viticulture rents could exceed ten times, average, those of wheat, principal agricultural area in Chile at that time7.
According to the registers of the National Agricultural Society, in 1897 there were 5,031 hectares planted with vines in Chile, under tens of vineyards classified as medium to big-sized, with variable extensions between 9 to 800 hectares. The list of vine growers associated to the National Agricultural Society in that same year closed with 161 members and there is a detail of the distribution of lands per province, from Freirina to the North, until Laja to the South, separated by category between fine vines (3,604 hectares) and common ones (1,426 hectares). This information may give an idea of how advanced the Chilean viticulture was at the end of the 19th century, which makes less strange the pretension to elaborate better class wines.
In this context, it is of great importance the “Viticulture and Winemaking Agreement†of 1897, of the writer and agricultural engineer Manuel Rojas L 8, who during the last years of the 19th century did a detailed research in land that led him to conclude about the diversity of the Chilean wine in production, that among its vines it had, apart from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, already very widespread, with Blanqueta vines, Chasselas, Cabernet Franc, Gamet, Listán, Meslier, Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillón, Aramón, Grappu, Cot, Mansene, Merlot, Pinot Gris, Romana, Syrah, tintoreras, Tressot and Verdot, to mention some of them 9.
It calls the attention the great variety of vines present in such list and the fact that many of them continue nowadays their production. A great testimony of that have been the recent rediscoveries of Carmenère and Fer 10 fifteen years ago in the Maipo Valley, and the one of vines of Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Trousseau, among others, that as it is shown in the agreement of Rojas11, they were already present in Chile from the second half of the 19th century.
As regards the viticultural panorama at the beginning of the 20th century, the relationship between wine and commerce was presented in a very auspicious way, having consolidated many vineyards its enormous exports to Europe and the neighboring countries, satisfying with ample efficiency the increasing demands of the domestic market in expansion thanks to the revenues coming from the saltpeter. This boom was materialized, in the public field, in the important works that started to renew the old appearance of cities like Santiago and ValparaÃso facing the Centenary, and also in the private field, where the oligarchy was in charge of materializing its showy desires in palaces, parks, gardens, wineries and vineyards that made the Colchagua and Maipo valleys seem like a second French countryside.
Wine and public health
On the other hand, the wine consumption showed serious complications as regards the public health among popular classes. Complimented by its pleasant and spirituous goodness by the oligarchy of those times, as well as by poets, novelists and singers, it was, however, strongly questioned by the Medical Association and some political authorities that accused it as the responsible for the principal social vice of those days among the crowd: the alcoholism.
But having overcome the quarrel very characteristic of the so-called “Social Issue†and the consequent obstacles that established the Alcohol Law of 1902 and 1938, that regulated its consumption, the first one, and dictaminated the prohibition of planting new vines, the second one (a rule that would be derogated in 1974), the development of the national viticultural industry did not stop. On the contrary, in pursuit of getting over a period of lack of progress after the end of the Second World War, it retook its growth during the last decades of the 20th century, to a large extent strengthened by the expansion of the world market at the end of the eighties, the progressive increase not only in the domestic consumption but also of the world average and, significantly, boosted by the relation price and quality, competitiveness that ended positioning the Chilean wine in the world context.
As regards the cultural heritage of the Chilean viticulture, from what can be referred as the second Era (considering the colonial viticulture as the first one), it is precise to underline the indelible mark that the French influence left from the 19th century. Considered by most of the specialists as a valuable contribution to the renewal and modernization of the enological culture of Chile, it is not less certain that it printed a push seal in the way the wines have been produced and commercialized from that time on, knowing that kind of depressive interregnum that experienced the industry from the postwar and until the end of 1970.
It also true that, unlike cases that eventually may be nearer, as the Argentine or Uruguayan 12, the bases of the Chilean viticultural reformulation during the foregone century did not agree with the arrival of a great number of immigrants from the Mediterranean Europe, who brought with them their customs, language, gastronomy, ways of vine cultivation and of relating with the surroundings, etc. In one word, their culture, and more specifically in this chapter, their viticulture. An issue that has been exposed in diverse instances and that in certain occasions plays against the image that is searched to project Chile in the world as a wine producer with a hallmark.
Opposite to the viticulture of RÃo de la Plata, the heritage and productive revolution of the country originated from the great mining, commercial and bank fortunes, in which sinus there appears the image of France as a cultural referent with much sophistication. This fact points out that the Chilean viticulture enjoys a slant that frequently shows as excessively oligarchic; a wine culture that has been built, since the 19th century, controlled from the peak of the social pyramid to its huge base, element characteristic of our idiosyncrasy which explains, among other things, the exiguous level of domestic consumption that today are evidenced by the figures, unlike the neighboring countries that double, triplicate or quadruplicate.
The fact is that it was this renewed oligarchy, conformed from the combination between the traditional landowner aristocracy and the new social actors that appear during the second half of the 19th century, the responsible for the transformation, not only of the heritage elements characteristic of the colonial viticulture, such as the winery, winepress and country house, but also of the superposition of the archetype of the French vineyard over the Creole Hispanic traditional legacy.
Paradoxically, with a tradition broken between the Hispanic inherited from the colony and the French influence from the beginning of the republican life, a great part of the Chilean wine has been systematically designed for the medium classes of the world, having been well-known due to its price and quality relation more than its centenary tradition, rooted deeply in the identity of its people, the landscape and the material and immaterial heritage of the nation.
This possible fact faces not only the question about the origin of the Chilean viticulture, but also about which its historical sense is, recovering that centenary tradition that was deeply submerged by the new ways adopted from 1850 and every certain time remembers of its “obstinate†presence in some provinces like the unirrigated land of Maule, the transversal valleys of Norte Chico or the coast AraucanÃa.
New presentations, that although reported great benefits as regards economy under its developing and modernizing proposal, in the near future they threaten to obscure the local heritage disseminated in the almost unembraceable mosaic of small towns and villages that had lived in the shadow of the vine arbors of the country and Muscatel for centuries.
A scenario where the historical subject that emerges is not the one of the prosperous vine growers with exclusivity, but it includes the common peasant for whom a wine glass is so natural as water. Basically, as the wine has always been present in its environment, among its common places in a landscape that still in these times is able to show the huge cultural heritage the viticulture has bequeathed to the Chilean identity.