Sergio Valente has represented Errazuriz since the dawn of wine in Taiwan, since the days when Robert Mondavi first established Seña in Chile’s Aconcagua Valley, and since those early days the owners, EDUARDO CHADWICK and his family, have strived to earn worldwide respect for the best of Chilean wine. The selection we tasted through this week was certainly among the best possible, and in a tribute to Taiwan’s long-standing support of Errazuriz, they sent Francisco Baettig, their chief winemaker, to introduce their best wines to a small group of wine journalists in Taipei.

Newest among the offerings were the wines from Aconcagua Costa, close to the Pacific Ocean, where the icy cold Humbolt Current moderates temperatures, and volcanic schist soils keep the wines lean and saline. Production is still experimentally tiny, and so these rare wines fetch very high prices, if you can find them.

As with their other projects in fine wine, CHADWICK and Baettig have aimed for obsessive attention to detail in site selection and preparation as well as in every step of the winemaking process.

In my own opinion, these wines only make sense if you stop seeing them as a commercial caprice and instead recognize them as maneuvers of diplomacy. The wines and the family travel the world in service of their nation, for they are all passionately loyal. Everywhere they go they carry the message that Chile deserves a place at the high table. No expense is too great with such an objective in view.

Though we all waited patiently for our chance to taste Don Maximiano, still Errazuriz’s flagship Cabernet Sauvignon, in this case vintage 2014, and it was fabulously rich and elegant, my favorite red of the event was KAI, Errazuriz’s top varietal Carmenere. I am quite sure I will never taste a better example of this variety. All the characteristics that so easily go awry in lesser expressions, like savory herbs, salad greens, dark plums and umami, in KAI syncopate magically, defying analysis —like a Bach fugue— at once dazzlingly complex and surprising, while still perfectly poised and clearly, unmistakably Carmenere. To me Kai more than any other wine expresses the ambition and the achievement of Chile to claim a uniquely honorable position in the world.

Thank you Sergio Valente as always for treating us to a life-confirming experience. Thank you Francisco for going so far into details, perhaps to a depth only you can reach, and thank you EDUARDO CHADWICK for devoting your life and your fortune to wine and to your country.