(Wine-Searcher) - In the second part of our round-up, we visit rain-affected South America and heat-struck South Africa.

Chile

Chile's wine regions range more than 1000 kilometers from north to south, so national generalizations are always difficult. However, in the 2016 vintage, the El Niño weather cycle certainly had a widespread effect, with most regions reporting cooler and wetter years. Crops are generally lower and most wines are lighter than average, although many producers are reporting excitement about the freshness of their wines.

The Central Valley regions saw a cooler than normal season leading to delayed picks; then rains hit in April around harvest time when some producers still had late-ripening fruit on the vine. A following cold spell also made it very hard to recover that part of the crop. However those who managed to avoid the rains gave very positive reports on the cooler-style red grapes, with lower sugar levels and slower-maturing flavor ripeness suggesting more elegant, lower-alcohol reds.

In Casablanca, extra humidity meant that some varieties came under pressure from fungal attacks including powdery mildew. That aside, early ripening varieties were successful and lower alcohol and higher acidity bode well for rosés and whites, according to Pablo Morandé of RE and Viña Morande. Leonardo Erazo reported a similar story in Itata, where Rogue Vines, his project with Justin Decker is based. Although wet weather at flowering reduced the crop, the cool season delivered high quality wines.

Further north the drought-prone regions of Limari, Huasco and Elqui benefited greatly from high snowfall levels over winter, which sufficiently relieved greatly depleted water reserves to cope with the warm summer. Marcelo Retamal at De Martino rates 2016 as a great year for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in these areas.

Argentina 

As with Chile, Mendoza's 2016 vintage was very much influenced by El Niño weather systems, and is regarded as one of the most challenging in the careers of many current winemakers, who were not able to rely on past experience of similar conditions.

This was a cool year in Mendoza, which usually has sunshine through the year and hot summers. Spring was particularly cold and wet, which put the harvest back by a month. Leonardo Erazo, winemaker of Altos Las Hormigas, "cannot remember a more mind-draining harvest". Erazo seeks freshness, acidity and fine-grained tannins in his red wines, and feels that Malbec has a "golden moment for harvesting", after which the tannins become over-ripe and the wine loses structure. This moment was much harder to find in such a drawn-out ripening process.

As in many regions of Chile, those who left their grapes on the vine too long suffered from a very wet April with four times the average rainfall, encountering botrytis alongside powdery and downy mildew. Spraying regimes had to be greatly intensified by many producers, and some vineyards had to be abandoned as producers concentrated on their top sites. The Uco Valley faired better in terms of disease, as its poor soils do not hold moisture. Whilst crops are down, winemakers are again generally pleased with the fresh, lower-alcohol wines they have made.

Elsewhere in Argentina, a warm summer in Patagonia compensated for cold temperatures in the late winter and spring, and San Juan also had a good year. Together these two regions may play an important role in compensating larger producers for lower yields in Mendoza. In Salta, spring frosts reduced yields but quality is also promising.