Have Chilean Wines Broken The Michelin Seal (of Approval)?

August 29, 2014 Ethan Millspaugh
Have Chilean Wines Broken The Michelin Seal (of Approval)?

Scan the wine lists of the seven Michelin 3-star restaurants in New York City and it won’t take you long to find a $1,000-plus bottle of vino — or even a $10,000-plus bottle. And don’t be surprised if you find those rare Italian labels and even rarer French vintages you’ve only heard whispers about (the crown jewel undoubtedly being Per Se’s $33,000 bottle of 1900 Château d’ Yquem). New Yorkers have good and often expensive tastes. But are these tastes limited to old world wines? Scan the same lists for a rare bottle of Chilean wine and you’re unlikely to find, well, any.

Of all the (Google-able) Michelin 2- and 3-star restaurants in the City, only one wine list has a Chilean wine on it. One! And it’s not where you’d think. New Korean establishment Jungsik (pictured below) offers a $175 bottle of 2007 Concha y Toro Don Melchor.

jungsik

Why all this talk about Chilean wine? According to Drink Business, The Greenhouse, a Michelin 2-star restaurant located in the Mayfair village of London, recently added a £850 (a little over $1,400) bottle of 1989 Viña Santa Rita Casa Real Cabernet Sauvignon, the Chilean producer’s first-ever vintage, to their wine list — a wine list that already includes a number of Concha y Toro Don Melchors. And while it may not quite be among the hallowed 3-star restaurants yet, The Greenhouse’s move certainly indicates a drastic shift in supposed “Old World” ideology.

But the question now is: what’s next? A $1,000-plus bottle from a region outside the Maipo Valley in Chile? Or, perhaps, a $10,000-plus bottle from another New World vineyard?

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