Abstract

Chilean wine production underwent significant changes due to the trade liberalization policy implemented in the country, becoming an impulse for the export volume to grow 20 times between 1990 and 2019. To achieve this success, the national wine industry developed different strategies such as an increase in vineyard area, increase in production efficiency, viticultural zoning and adoption of technologies, among others. All this action allowed Chile to position itself in eighth place in the area of vineyards, in sixth place in the production of wine production, and in fourth place in the volume of wine exported. However, this development of exports has not covered all the wine producers in the country. On the contrary, it has affected the sustainability of small rural winegrowers and traditional production areas, as has happened in part in the South Maule, Bío Bío and Ñuble regions. The main objectives of this chapter are to contrast both realities and determine the factors that drove the uneven progress of the national wine sector to suggest development policies and plans to face sustainability problems. In this sense, complementing the incorporation of technology and knowledge without losing the identity of the wine and the territories could be one of the key factors to improve the sustainability of small and medium wineries.