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However, after about 1915 Chilean wine exports declined and production focused
increasingly on the small domestic market. By 1972, quality wine exports were down to
only US$1.8mn. (Banco Central, 1983: 244). Little investment had been made in either
vineyards or wineries for much of the twentieth century. Wine was still largely made
without reference to new technologies or new ideas.
The shift in Chile to a more open economy in the Pinochet dictatorship did not have an
immediate impact in the wine sector in terms of rectifying the long history of
underinvestment and focusing on the domestic market. Between 1972 and 1979, Wine
exports rose to about US$21mn in the latter year (Banco Central, 1982). However this
was to be a “false alarm” as exports then declined and did not reach US$23mn until 9
years later in 1988 (Banco Central, 1990). This was partly because under the dictatorship
Chile had a negative image abroad with some consumers boycotting products from the
country. Nevertheless, deregulation of the wine sector in the late 1970’s meant that
pioneers such as the Spaniard, Miguel Torres, were free to plant new vines and upgrade
the process involved leading the to the more liberal wine production stage that Chile is
currently in.
Since the 1990s, however, export growth has been growing very rapidly indeed. If one
compares the US$17.9bn of quality wine exports in 1988 with the quality wine exports
of US$1,012mn in 2007, then one has a factor of over 56 times over 19 years to contend
with. This is the biggest change in Chile’s wine exports that has yet been experienced.