Lima-where, you might be asking? Well, any serious wine lovers should familiarise themselves with Chile's Limarí Valley.
This isn't some tiny sub-region of one of Chile's better
known regions in the 300-mile vinous heartland south of Santiago (like, say, Colchagua); it's a long way north - a couple of hours away by plane and a world away from the Central Valley.
As you fly north, the differences become obvious. The Andes still loom on the right, but the land is more arid, and the Coastal Range of mountains, which shields Chile's Central Valley from the Pacific, disappears.
So, there are two contradictory climatic effects at work in Limarí. On the one hand, it's incredibly dry. You're close to the Atacama Desert, the driest place on the planet, and Limarí typically gets only 2mm of summer rain from October to April. And inland, near the Andes, it gets scorchingly hot, with temperatures often up in the high-30s.
This makes it good for growing grapes for pisco (Chile's white spirit), but too warm for wine.
Over towards the coast, it's a different story. The lack of a protecting mountain range means that the influence of the Pacific is felt far more keenly than in the vineyards south of Santiago in Maipo, Rapel et al. In January and February the average maximum is 25°C - more Marlborough than Maipo, while fogs until 11 every morning make for a long, gentle growing season.
All of which means that, if you have the wherewithal to install an irrigation system (and let's face it, they don't come cheap) you have probably one of the most perfect wine growing climates in the world, let alone Chile: warm but
not hot, and reliably dry.
And if you've been tasting juicy but boring Chilean reds for a couple of weeks, the wines from Limarí come as a welcome relief. Lighter in style (sometimes almost leafy), with lower alcohol, they are more European than New World, with naturally-higher acidity and perkier, less-tropical fruit.
San Pedro already has a vineyard and (by now) a winery in the region, while Concha y Toro have just bought 80ha of vineyard. They won't be the last, and you should keep your
eyes open for bottles bearing the Limarí appellation, particularly for Syrah and Chardonnay.