In November, nine Chileans and five visitors from the US convened in Casablanca for the first annual Wines of the Pacific tasting. Mariana Martinez, the editor of planetavino.com, and I worked together on organizing the event, which was sponsored by Pro|Chile.
The idea developed out of another tasting Martinez runs with a partner in Argentina: an annual Wines of the Andes competition in which tasters from both countries assess the state of the mountain wines on both sides of the Andes. When I was traveling in Chile last year, Martinez asked me to help create a parallel tasting for wines grown along the coast.