Chilean wine

The wine industry is a very important aspect of Latin American culture that has been continuously overlooked, especially in Chile, where the progress made in the wine industry has not received its due accolades. As I peruse the aisles of the local wine merchant I realize that Latin American wine is becoming more and more popular, and the wine is relatively inexpensive compared to the its North American or European competitors. Chilean wine is the product of wealthy French land owners who migrated to Chile after its independence from Spain, and began to plant the right grapes to produce good European style wine. However, during the years of agrarian reforms the grape crops lost land to other crops, and the industry fell apart. In the late 1980s, the economy of Chile began to rebound from years of repression, and the wine industry went through a period of rebirth. Today, the Chilean wine industry is exporting 600 million dollars a year of wine to the North Atlantic, and the industry continues to expand its markets.