Adolfo Hurtado from Cono Sur was in yesterday. Great tasting... but the earthquake....

He said;

“The earthquake was really big – at least 8.2 in Concepcion. It lasted about 3 minutes... you can’t stand on your feet at all... you can’t believe what it’s like during an earthquake. It’s really scary. 400 died but with those temblores and the tsunami... Could have easily been much worse. You can’t get hold of your family, your friends, all your loved ones and you feel really desperate. The only thing that was working was messaging - eventually found out everyone was OK.

People are still really SCARED right now, really scared. We’ve had lots of replicas (aftershocks) recently. The last one was 6.9 – a big tremor normally. But you have to remember that the scale is exponential, so an 8 is 30 times stronger than a 7. When the last tremor happened I was at a meeting on the 21st floor – the top floor – of the World Trade Centre in Santiago. within, like, 30 seconds the whole room was empty and everyone left the building straight away. That’s how scared people are. And the shocks will continue for about 3 months now.

We lost 2 million litres of wine at Cono Sur, wine industry of Chile lost 100 million litres. $250 million loss to the industry. But very soon after the quake we were able to start the 2010 harvest and it should be a good one.

2010 is a special year for the Chilean people; we celebrate 200 years of independence.

People are really optimistic and they’re working hard to get through the disruption. You know, but, Thank God, we’re carrying on. Life goes on, you know.

Check-in, customs and immigration – everything you normally find at an airport – is now all done outside in the car park under tents.

You know, Chileans are really organised people, and we just carry on. You don’t believe when you get on the plane after checking-in in a tent that your bags will arrive at the other end, but they do. It’s really amazing. It’s all working. The one word I would really emphasise is the SOLIDARITY that Chileans feel to each other. People are prepared and no-one is depressed. We are reaching out and helping each other. It’s real solidarity. – Chilean people ... There are only 16 million Chileans ... have raised over 100 MILLION US DOLLARS.... to help each other.

You know, that’s the thing. For a couple of days we were shocked, but then it’s like, ‘no more crying. We get on and keep going now’.

I think if I had to use two words to sum up the feeling in Chile right now, it’s SOLIDARITY and POSITIVITY. The same in the wine trade. We want to send this message out to all the people we work with. We discovered after this that Chile has a lot of friends around the world who want to help and we feel really positive about the future. We want to re-build and get going again, and we will."

All Adolfo and the others want us to do is keep drinking Chilean wines. Great, isn't it; to be able to help people just by drinking their wines. Their lovely wines!

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