At the end of March,
shortly before returning to California, I made a brief trip from Santiago to Valparaíso and, en
route, had the good fortune to meet Courtney Kingston (pictured above) – also a California
resident – and visit her family’s Kingston
Family Vineyards (pictured below). Because the visit was necessarily brief –
though I did get a chance to sample the produce before I caught the local bus
to Valparaíso – she agreed to an email interview that follows.
WBB: Please tell me something of your family history – as I recall, you have
longstanding connections in Chile, but you are a California resident now spending an extended period in
Santiago. How much time do you normally spend here each year?
CK: My great-grandfather, Carl John Kingston was a mining engineer who came
to Chile in the early 1900s from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan – which used
to be copper country in the US As a
result of a mining investment gone bad, he acquired as collateral what’s now
our farm in the Casablanca
Valley. So my grandfather, my
father, and all their siblings were born and raised in the same farmhouse that
our family here continues to take care of.
Typically my family
and I live in Northern California, near San Francisco, Stanford University, and
wine country. I come down to Chile every
couple of months, as well as lead the distribution of our wines, primarily in
the US, Canada, UK and Brazil. But in
2014 my husband, our three daughters and I are living in Santiago, which allows
me to be more hands-on at the winery, and also for our three daughters to
attend school through the Chilean school year.
WBB: What is your annual production, and what percentage is exported? On such
a large property, what acreage is devoted to wine, and what else does the farm
produce? Is any of that exported?
CK: Throughout our family’s history here we’ve been farmers of dairy and beef
cattle and various crops, and beginning in the late 1990s we began growing
grapes as well. Today we sell 90% of our
grapes to other Chilean wineries, but we make about 2000-3000 cases per year of
our own Kingston Family wine. That’s
a very small amount for a winery, which allows us to make it by hand.
We export about 90
percent of our production to the US and Canada, with the balance going
primarily to the UK, Brazil and Chile.
We’re unusual as a Chilean winery in that, also having a base in the US,
we can offer our US clients the ability to buy from our website or to receive
regular shipments of Kingston wine via our Old Corral Club.
WBB: Just inland from the port of Valparaíso,
Casablanca’s climate resembles that of coastal California. What California wine
region would be the closest comparison? To what degree do you rely on
irrigation?
CK: Byron Kosuge
from Napa, California, has been out consulting winemaker since we began at
Kingston. He works with vineyards up and down the California coast, and says
western Casablanca
reminds him most of California’s Santa
Rita Hills on the south-central coast [near Santa Barbara] – both in terms
of topography, and in how the cool coastal breezes bring alternating fog and
sunshine to our vineyards. Overall, Chile is like California with the “volume
turned up.” Instead of the Sierra Nevada, we’ve got the Andes; instead of
driving three hours from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe to ski, in Chile you could
ski Portillo and swim in the Pacific (in a wetsuit, no doubt) on the same day.
In terms of water
for our grapes, we do drip irrigation – little drips from a hose running across
the top of the vines – which allows us to give the minimum amount of water that
the grapes can get by on. Not only is this more sustainable and economical, but
also the best wine grapes typically come when you don’t provide them with too
much water.
WBB: What varietals do best in Casablanca? Am I correct that you are one of
the few Casablanca wineries focusing on reds, particularly Syrah? What other
varietals (and blends) do you produce?
CK: Casablanca has traditionally been best known for its white
varietals. We do make Sauvignon Blanc
and Chardonnay, but we also were among the pioneers making reds – specifically,
Syrah and Pinot Noir. We’re known in
Casablanca --especially where Kingston is at the western end of the Casablanca
Valley – as having a cool climate. Twenty
years ago, many people thought that meant you couldn’t make great reds in
Casablanca, but in fact we and other producers here have shown that cool
climate Syrah and Pinot noir can be remarkable (if challenging to make!)
WBB: Who controls the Chilean wine industry? Is the Movimiento de Viñateros
Independientes a response to the big producers? How many of you are there, and
where are you? Would you say you’re less conventional than big producers like
Concha y Toro?
CK: The vast
majority of wine produced in Chile is by a handful of major producers, but from
our perspective at Kingston Family, we don’t feel affected or limited by that
in any way. The central challenge we have,
like any small business, is creating awareness among wine lovers about what
we’re doing making our small lots of wine here in our corner of Casablanca
Chile. So by teaming up with about 20
other artisan winemakers here in Chile – via MOVI, the Movement of Independent Winemakers – we’re able to amplify the
message to the market about the innovative wines coming from so many
interesting boutique winemakers in Chile.
WBB: Are you open for tours and tasting? One thing that’s always caught my
attention is that Chilean winery visits are expensive – more so than in
California and much more so than in Argentina (particularly Mendoza). Why won't
or can’t Chilean wineries have free or low-cost tours and tasting?
Yes, we host several
tours each week, by appointment only (we’re only now finally getting a sign up at
the entrance to our vineyard – until now, visitors had to hunt to find us). We also do lunches for visitors on our
terraza overlooking the Casablanca Valley, and for larger groups we cater
candlelit dinners in our barrel room. In
the first 6 months of this year, we had visitors from 21 countries, the
majority coming from the United States, followed by Germany, UK, Chile and
Brazil.
At Kingston, we have
a fee for our tasting and tours that allows us to provide a personalized 90-minute
tour and tasting for each visitor, and we open fresh bottles for each
visit. And for many visitors, we rebate
their fee if they purchase wines during their visit, or if they join our Old
Corral Club. And frankly as a boutique
winery, providing a free or low-cost tour & tasting largely attracts people
who have a low inclination to buy higher-end wines. (Incidentally, even the biggest wineries in
California typically have tasting fees of US$15 to US$40 these days.)
WBB: Is there anything I’ve overlooked that you would like to add?
CK: Here are a couple of suggested topics, based on what many visitors ask
us….
1) What changes in wine and tourism has Kingston Family Vineyards seen in the
past decade in Chile?
The greatest two
changes for us have been the growing awareness globally about the availability
of very high quality wines from Chile – we’re no longer known simply for
high-volume ‘value’ wines – and the growth in overseas travelers for whom
coming to Casablanca wineries is a key part of their Chile travel plans. We think these are great signs for Chile in
general, and artisan wineries in particular.
2) What is the role of social media today for a winery in Chile?
Social media has
become increasingly key for us in connecting with wine lovers and friends of
Kingston Family. Before, we could really
only communicate with our friends and followers a couple times per year via
email, but with social media we can provide more-frequent but less-intrusive
updates to them, as well as receive feedback and answer questions that people
have. To date, most of that interaction
has taken place via Twitter (@kingstonwine), but also a lot of our guests post
photos of their visits on Facebook and
Instagram.
With that said, the
majority of high-end wine buyers today are in their 40s or older, whereas the
most active social media users are younger than that, so we expect to see the
importance of social media continue to increase in coming years.
