Chile: Leyda

I remember tasting wines from Viña Leyda, the winery, back when nobody had heard of the Leyda Valley and people had just started talking about Chile's new cooler climate coastal regions lying, in this case, to the west of Santiago (and just south of the perhaps better known Casablanca valley), let alone other new areas further north e.g. Limarí, Elquí. Leyda was set up in 1997 and was the driving force behind creating a name-sake sub-region in 2002 (this could get confusing...). They've been busy since then too, as the estate now comes to nearly 250 hectares (towards 700 acres) of mostly 'cool' varieties as per my tasting notes below.