In the final of Just-Drinks.com Southern Hemisphere harvest reports, Dean Best looks at Chile. The country's wine producers are heralding 2006 as an excellent year for both red and white wines, as fears that frosts in the spring and mid-April may have affected quality have subsided.

Moderate temperatures and low rainfall this year have combined to leave Chile's wine producers bullish about the 2006 harvest. A meteorological phenomenon dubbed La Niña, which hits Chile's coastline once every couple of years, was "the determining factor" behind this year's weather, according to Cono Sur, which is part of Chile's leading wine producer Concha y Toro.

La Niña reduced the temperature of the Pacific, resulting in less evaporation and minimal rain, which delayed the harvest by up to 15 days in most regions and produced, as Cono Sur put it, "white wines of great aromatic intensity, freshness and minerality, especially those from Casablanca ". The lack of rain, combined with colder temperatures on average, meant that red wines had become "beautifully coloured, complex, elegant, forthcoming and juicy."

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