About Flaherty Wines
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Welcome to Chile! We are Ed Flaherty and Jen Hoover, proprietors of Flaherty Wines. We first came to Chile in 1993 to work a harvest, and we never left. The country has an exceptional climate for winegrowing, producing ripe fruit with good acidity and intense flavors. Chile also has some of the best whitewater kayaking in the world, which had more than a little to do with our decision to stay. Our kayaking days are sadly over, but the local wines just keep getting better.
Over the years, Ed has worked with some of the top wineries in the Chilean industry, including Cono Sur, Errázuriz, Vía Wines, and now Viña Tarapacá. As an executive winemaker, Ed spends more time in the office and the tasting lab than in the winery. We started Flaherty in 2004 so that he could get his hands dirty again–or at least a little wine stained during crush. Flaherty is one of the few boutique wineries in Chile. We started with under a hundred cases in 2004 and have grown to about 500 cases in 2008. We are planning to keep production around that level in 2009. Most of our sales are in Chile, but we are also exporting a bit to Romania and Brazil.
In 2008, we bought 14 hectares in Cauquenes, where we are planting a small vineyard. The Cauquenes blog will chronicle the process of developing a vineyard in a remote region of Chile. The winemaking blog focuses on our home winery in the Aconcagua valley.
Our label was designed by Marcus Bradbury of of the People Marketing Group in Santiago.