Purpose of this Blog
The purpose of the blog is to share our experiences discovering Chilean wine as wine loving expats living in Chile so that you may also enjoy Chilean wines in your country or perhaps someday visit Chile. At the same time, we don’t only drink Chilean wines–We review wines from other places or compare them to Chilean wines. This could include travel to different wine countries and general wine tips. We also have hundreds of Chilean wine tasting notes. Therefore, this blog is for both veteran wine enthusiasts and beginners to explore together. We hope some Chileans read this blog too, so you can experiment with lesser known Chilean wines and international wines.
CONTACT: winediplomats@gmail.com
My Wine Bio
Aaron Chan, The Wine Diplomats Host
Although I grew up in Northern California 45 minutes from Napa and Sonoma, I didn’t really get into wine until I traveled to France in 2001. There I discovered how wonderful wine is with food. I didn’t realize I could taste other things in wine besides fruit and alcohol, which is all I tasted in the cheap white Zins we drank. Yet, even cheap French wines have terroir and are meant to complement food. Bordeaux and Rhone wines paired with French food became intoxicating for me. Being lucky enough to have a French wife, I have continued returning to France to experience the French culture of wine and food.
Eventually we moved to Washington DC, and I developed my wine chops in the same shops that wine critic Robert Parker used to go to when he was just a lawyer living in Maryland-Calvert Woodley and MacArthur Beverages. I would go to any free tastings they had. I would try whatever on the shelf I could afford. I would research anything online I could find about the grape variety, vintage, region and ideal pairing. Eventually I started investing in more expensive wines.
Me having Barolo in La Morra, Piedmont, Italy
In 2014, we moved to Geneva, where I learned a lot about other European wines besides French wines, especially Italian and Swiss wines. There were frequent tastings of international wines and even higher end wines that I couldn’t afford to drink. We were also a few hours away from wine regions like Burgundy, the Loire, the Rhone Valley, Piedmont, and the Jura. It didn’t hurt that I could do tastings in Sonoma, Napa and other parts of California whenever I visited my family too. My collection started to build.
Finally, we moved to Santiago, Chile in 2017. I’ve been exploring just about every Chilean wine I could get my hands on ever since. Fortunately, I’ve learned that Chilean wines are so much more diverse and dynamic than I had once thought because even I would get bored of drinking only cheap Chilean Cabernet from the Central Valley every day, which is mostly all you see of Chilean wines in other parts of the world.
I come from the perspective of a wine enthusiast and consumer just like most of you. I’m not a wine snob, but I am naturally a curious explorer, academic and teacher who likes to experience, reflect, learn and teach new things. Some of what is in this blog comes from years of experience while others are things I’ve just learned as I keep exploring.
Why do I love wine? In a nutshell, wine enhances everything. It enhances the meal. It enhances the conversation. It enhances life. Life can be monotonous and frustrating, but drinking wine from some other part of the world each night is a relieving consolation and escape. Besides just being delicious and sensual, it is an intellectual and philosophical challenge as well. My geeky side is happy to read, ponder and muse about the nature and history of wine. I’m also a collector at heart. I used to collect baseball cards when I was a kid, so wine allows me to collect something again. However, it’s something I can share with others and that I’ll hopefully consume before I die rather than just sitting in some box in the garage like my baseball cards. In that way, wine is both an exercise of carpe diem and self-discipline for the future. I’m happy to share this passion with you.
