In this same region of the Aconcagua Valley are some of the best vineyards and wine-making estates in Chile. The great Panquehue property, one of the Errazuriz estates, is a magnificent sight with its endless rows of trained vines bearing white and black grapes, stretching across the rich brown lowlands to the foot of the Andean spurs, where all cultivation ceases, and where valuable peat has been identified in vast stretches. Here are 2000 acres devoted to viniculture, and from the fruit of the low-trimmed branches is produced each year 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 litres of wine, chicha and brandy. Chilean red and white wines are of sound and pleasant quality, superior to the Mendoza brands, owing to greater suavity; some of the native-made “Sauternes” are practically indistinguishable from the French original. It is astonishing to realise the simplicity of this ancient industry of wine-making, for although Panquehue has today a machine crusher, and a mechanical press, an automatic bottler, etc., there is something primitive and ample in the process. The bodegas (cellar warehouses) of the estate are immense vistas of cool stillness, the huge vats looming high in the semi-darkness beneath a succession of great arches. This estate, with its enormous and luxurious house of the owners, its settled population of workers, its self-supporting crops and fine livestock, has almost a feudal atmosphere. Altogether, Chile has 90,000 hectares, or say 225,000 acres, under grape culture, about ten times as much as California in her pre-prohibition days.
While these vineyards of the central provinces are in very fine condition—extending west from Santiago to within sight of the sea on the beautiful slopes towards Valparaiso—the real heart of the grape country is farther south, where also lie the great food-producing regions of Chile. The great grape country is spread over Curicó, Talca, Maule, Linares, Ñuble and Concepción provinces, while the wonderful valley of Lontué is one great vineyard, with over 10,000 acres under cultivation. Estates follow in a long succession, some able to boast of model villages for workers and thoroughly up-to-date methods of wine-making. The product of Lontué is sold not only throughout Chile, but is shipped to Argentina, Peru and Colombia. “Dry” laws in Chile, advocated by Dr. Fernando Peña, do not seem likely to cause the extinction of viniculture here, if only for the reason that the use of wine is scarcely ever excessive among the native workmen, or in the educated classes. The industry is extremely important to Chile, is chiefly in the hands of Chileans-born, and represents a very large investment; these considerations would not, however, preserve the vineyards ultimately if the effect of their existence were pernicious. The facts appear to be against any idea of this kind.
South Americans in general inherit the temperate habits of the Latin, and when strong liquors cause trouble amongst such closely crowded groups of workers as one finds in the northern mines, badly made spirits and not wine are to be blamed. Against the disembarcation of imported spirits the workers of the north rose in arms, in 1920, procedure echoed in Punta Arenas a little later, and an investigator sent to the spot by the Mercurio of Santiago reported that for every pint of good southern wine sold in Taltal, there were twenty pints of noxious alcohol—much of it made on the spot in amateur stills.
Wheatfields, Orchards, and Sheepfarms
Cereal culture, whether of maize, wheat, barley or other grains, exists throughout Chile, but from Coquimbo to Chiloé are the great fields of trigo blanco and trigo candeal—the latter, hard wheat, grown chiefly upon 20,000 acres in the north of the Central Valley, and the former upon 1,000,000 acres, chiefly in the provinces of Maule, Linares, Ñuble, Concepción, Bio-Bio, Malleco, Cautín, Valdivia and Llanquihue. The total wheat crop is 5,500,000 metric quintales, worth 16,000,000 pesos. It is in the great fertile region of the south that one finds the largest number of small farmers, for most of this agricultural country has been opened during the last fifty or sixty years, and no great ancient estates exist. Valdivia and Llanquihue were developed mainly by the efforts of settlers from Central Europe in the middle of last century, while old Araucania was not finally opened to white settlers, whether foreigners or Chileans, until the punitive expedition of 1881 broke down the frontier for ever. Land was parcelled out in comparatively small estates, and as a result Chile is fortunate in counting about 97,000 land proprietors; of these, 65,000 owners farm less than 50 acres each; 25,000 others farm holdings of less than 500 acres; 5000 estates are between 500 and 2500 acres in extent; and only 465 proprietors are possessed of estates totalling over 12,000 acres.
To create these southerly farm lands great forestal areas have been necessarily denuded, and a good deal of work is required to keep down the luxurious growth of creepers, wild bamboos, ferns and undergrowth. But the southern agriculturist is spared the constant preoccupation of the northerner as regards water supply. Chile has little marsh or swamp country today, although the presence of large peat beds is eloquent of ancient bogs, but the south is very well watered. Too well watered, in fact, in some localities, Valdivia’s 115 inches of annual rainfall being well outdistanced by Chiloé’s 134 inches; the genial softness of the climate saves these localities from the unusual unpleasant effects of such heavy rainfalls, for if it is almost true that in Valdivia it rains every day, it is also true that the sun shines every day.
Between the Maule River and Lake Llanquihue the whole country of Chile is like familiar ground to the traveller from well-tended countries of Western Europe, an impression specially keen in Chile’s autumn, March and April. Orderly apple and cherry orchards stand bordered by hedges hung thick with ripening blackberries; long level fields show the tender green of clover. Beside the rose-clustered farmhouse are neatly built stacks of wheat straw; in the meadows are fine sleek cattle and well-groomed horses. The fenced garden is full of flowers, of vegetables and herbs, and behind the house is a grove of walnuts and chestnuts. The farmer riding along a muddy road has the ruddy cheeks of the temperate zone, and the only strange note is struck by his poncho and long jingling spurs. Rows of tall poplars, burned golden, edge the fields. As background to this ordered fertility there rise to the east the shining, silver-white heads of volcanos—Llaima, Villarica, or Antuco, or, farther south, Osorno and Calbuco—and from the lines of dark forest there run deep and silent rivers. The south is remarkable in possessing three navigable rivers, the Toltén, Imperial, and Valdivia; the Bueno is also traversed by small steamers in part of its course from Lake Ranco and is a channel for farm produce.
Wheat is harvested in the south at the end of March, but in May apples and pears are still being gathered and nuts are ripe. The big crops of strawberries, plums, and cherries are sent to jam and conserving factories, South Chile supplying the whole of the West Coast with canned fruit, while the export of fresh fruit to New York and London is a new industry with bright prospects.
South of Temuco the land is seen in three stages. Belts of primeval forests close down to the border of railway track or road, a green wall matted with the wild climbing bamboo, the trails of scarlet and purple fuchsias, or the slender vines of copihue with its beautiful rosy bells. Native beech and lingue, their feet deep in ferns, stand as a solid barrier, feathering at the top into thickly leaved branches; the wild witch-hazel’s sweetly scented, creamy flowers break from every thicket.
That is the first stage: the next is encountered where a settler has recently broken ground, and corn springs between the blackened stumps of burned trees. A log hut, thatched, windowless, stands at the side of the clearing. In the third stage all signs of violence are gone; the forest is conquered, the cleared space smoothed and ploughed, the homestead enclosed with a neat wooden fence. Rows of young fruit trees display slim twigs beside the farmhouse, and this already has its chicken-run, dove-cote, stable and pleasant meadow for horses and cattle. A chain of sawmills is seen in this lately redeemed country with its thick reserve of forest lands.