I had a rare chance to experience a bottle of wine from Chile today. We don’t normally buy wines from Chile or other countries from South America. Maybe it’s a slight bias or lack of knowledge, but I tend to stick to American, Italian, French, Australian and New Zealand wines. Oh yes, and German wines. And I have so many wines to taste from these countries that I tend to keep it simple.

Tonight for dinner, I grilled a strip steak, roasted cauliflower in the oven and made a salad. To go with dinner the wine was a Pinot Noir from Radius, vintage 2015, from the Central Valley in Chile. I originally bought the bottle because I have had the Red Blend by Radius which is a Washington wine and also very tasty. The wine is a bargain at under $10 and had an alcohol content of 13%. The wine was originally produced and bottled by Viña Alto Roble, Sagrada Familia S/N Curicó-Chile and imported by Precept Wine Seattle, Washington.

The wine was a translucent reddish purple color in the glass and had a slight alcohol smell when I stuck my nose in the glass. I tasted strawberries and raspberries on the first taste swirling the wine around in my mouth. The wine while not super dry was also not sweet, just a nice juicy fruit taste. There was spice and a little smoke on the finish. To say the wine went down easy was an understatement.

Normally I will open a Cabernet Sauvignon or Zinfandel to go with a steak, but I wanted to try something different and I can say that I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the steak and Pinot Noir went very nicely together.

I will have to broaden my wine choices to include more wines from South America and definitely look for this wine again.