Cono Sur is a brash young Chilean winery that seems to be doing everything right. Here the approach to winemaking is unabashedly New World with the emphasis is on ripe fruit and intense aromatics. Cono Sur was the first winery in Chile to use synthetic corks and the first to bottle all its whites in screwcap closures. They were making loads of Pinot Noir before the Sideways bandwagon got rolling, and today rank number five in the world for volume of Pinot Noir produced. Cono Sur was also the first winery in Chile to make and export Viognier, and it's Viognier we'd like to talk about here.

The Cono Sur Vision Viognier is a knockout. Flavors of citrus, stone fruits, honeydew, lime pith and minerals are succulent and enticing. The wine is full bodied but lacks (thankfully) the oily, viscous texture of many Viogniers. The wine is so balanced that it's tempting to say it has a Zen-like precision, but that description fails to capture the almost-hedonistic pleasure of drinking this lovely wine. The New World hasn't looked so good since Christopher Columbus made landfall in 1492.

The Vision line is Cono Sur's limited-production line in which the grapes are harvested from a parcel personally chosen by the winemaker. The Viognier is from the Colchagua Valley's Grafted Block, where the vines were grafted on to 50-year-old Chenin Blanc rootstock.
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