Map courtesy of WineWeb.com

Worldfocus Consulting Producer Edward Deitch is an MSNBC.com wine columnist who also blogs at Vint-ed, where this post originally appeared.

The impact of the massive earthquake on Chile’s wine industry has become more clear in recent days, and it is significant, though not as bad as some had feared.

Concha y Toro, Chile’s largest producer and exporter with vineyards throughout the wine region, said it had suspended its production for at least a week while it assesses the full extent of the damage.

In a statement, it said, “Our company, as well as the rest of the industry, have been heavily impacted by this catastrophe.” It described serious damage to some of its main wineries and “important loss in wine and production capacity,” noting that the area in central Chile that felt the biggest impact from the quake “is the heartland of wine production.”

Another big wine operation, Miguel Torers Chile, said “material losses are significant” at its winery in the Curico Valley. About 300 oak casks were smashed, thousands of bottles were destroyed and a stainless steel vat with a capacity of 100,000 liters cracked, losing all the wine.

The winery’s president, Miguel Torres Maczassek, was on a business trip to the United States when the quake hit.

Melanie McEvoy Quirke, a spokesperson for the winery in New York, told me that some of Torres’s vineyards were even closer to the epicenter than the winery itself and that “as we speak they are getting ready for the harvest.” She had no information yet on vineyard damage.

Worries about the harvest were echoed in a comment on my blog from Tim Britton, an importer of South American wines in Berkeley, California, who said he had two concerns:

One, that not only have some of the vineyards lost stock, not all but many have some significant losses of bottle and vat stock; and two, the harvest is not far off and both equipment and workers will now be in very short supply. The impact of this quake on Chile’s wine exports may be felt for many years. The good news from our contacts is that with one exception no wineries incurred loss of life due to the fortunate timing of a Saturday early morning.

Juliet Rizek, a spokesperson for TGIC Wine Importers in Woodland Hills, California, said two of the wineries it represents, Viña Montes in Colchagua and Viña Santa Ema in the Maipo Valley, suffered some wine loss and structural damage to older buildings. She said the wineries had generators and were keeping the temperatures of the wines under control.

In a statement on the company’s Web site, the president and founder, Alex Guarachi, who is Chilean himself, offers a list of relief organizations to which donations can be texted on cell phones. By today, Montes reported that its equipment and bottle lines were operational and that power had returned. It said it would proceed with the harvest as originally planned.

Another company, Arboleda, reported damage to some of its wineries and continues to evaluate its losses and the impact on market availability. It advised customers to plan an extra two weeks of lead time for orders, saying that even if the winery is working, there will likely be a backlog at ports, which will place a priority on perishable goods such as fresh fruits.

- Edward Deitch

Worldfocus special correspondent Kristen Gillespie ventures through Lebanon’s vineyards.

Below, she blogs about her experience in the field.

From the Field

Let’s be up front about it: this story is unapologetically biased. I love Lebanese wine.

Putting together this story wasn’t exactly a hardship assignment. There are so many excellent producers in Lebanon, but I chose Chateau Belle-Vue because Naji and Jill Boutros represent a new generation of winemakers. It’s not just about the product — they are creating meaningful social change in their village while producing organically grown, award-winning wines. Jill made sure we had tasted plenty of samples from the oak barrels, which is where the wine from each specific grape variety lies for two years until it is blended to create a new vintage.

Chateau Ksara is one of Lebanon’s oldest producers, and aside from the consistent quality of their wines, the miles of mysterious, Roman-era subterranean tunnels fuel speculation as to what they were used for. Ksara graciously opened their doors, and their wine cellars, for us to film.

Another top producer not to be missed is Chateau Kefraya, which produces a reliably crisp Blanc de Blanc for about $6. For travelers to Lebanon, it’s available, along with many others, at Beirut’s airport.

Sahtain! (Cheers!)

- Kristen Gillespie

Chinese wine brands are relatively unknown outside of China.

Though the Chinese milk scandal has dominated headlines in the past few weeks, another beverage gets relatively less attention — wine. The Chinese wine industry has expanded greatly in the past decade, even luring foreign winemakers to China’s fertile land. It has even inspired its own blog: the “Grape Wall of China.”

Cam MacMurchy hosts “BizTraveler” on Tianjin Television and launched the PR and media company Performance Internationalis. He writes at “Zhongnanhai Blog” about the expansion of the Chinese wine industry and its future prospects.

Wineries grow, but is anybody going?

CHANGLI, HEBEI - The thunder is crackling outside my window as I write this, from a beautiful hotel suite at the Chateau Bodega Langes in Hebei Province. For some reason (perhaps the story meetings were canceled this month) this is the second wine-based episode we’ve shot in the last four weeks. The first was at a beautiful winery called Chateau Junding near Yantai in Shandong Province; many months ago, we did two other wine episodes: one as part of a Valentine’s Day show, while the other was a tour of the Dynasty Winery in Tianjin.

I’m not complaining: getting tours of wineries, staying in beautiful chateaus, eating from lavish buffets and drinking free wine is far better than a regular nine-to-fiver.

There’s no doubt that the wine industry (like basically all industries) is growing exponentially in China. Chateau Junding offers a compete wine tour, wine tasting lounge, and a wine museum.  It is set in Penglai, which is about an hour’s drive from Yantai International Airport (and yes, Yantai receives international flights). The decks offer stunning vistas of the nearby lake and vineyards, and the service was top-notch.

While people are very friendly here at Bodega Langes, I’ve found it to be a far cry from the lavish setting in Yantai (perhaps, no matter what Bodega Langes does, the dusty mountains of Hebei can’t compete with a seaside scenery in Shandong). I spoke to the head sommelier here earlier today and asked if they were targeting foreign visitors. “Yes,” he said.  “But you have no English signs?  And no western food?” I retorted.  Perhaps I wouldn’t have been normally so blunt in my assessment, but I remain slightly jet-lagged from a recent trip overseas and the day was dragging. Still, my point stands.

Perhaps, though, I was a little off base: It’s not that there are no foreign visitors here, it’s just that there aren’t any visitors here.  Nor were there very many in Yantai. Nor did I find any at the Dynasty Winery. So what’s happening?

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