Insider guide to Chile: Seña's Alejandra Chadwick shares her top tips on Chilean wine, food and travel

Some of my earliest memories are outdoors: riding horses through the vineyards with my family, asking my father endless questions and pinching bunches of grapes to bring home as little gifts. Wine was simply part of the day.

I used to hear my father and the winemakers talk about a wine’s structure and its layers. One day, I asked one of them what they meant. I had been listening to Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven in the car that morning, and he explained the wine through the song: how it built in layers, how each part carried the whole. Suddenly it made sense.

Harvest was the best of all, the whole place alive, everyone working together.

It was never really a career decision. Wine was simply part of ordinary life and over time it became part of who I am. Being part of the sixth generation [of a wine family] gives me a strong sense of where I come from, but I believe each generation has to find its own relationship with wine.

My father spent decades proving that Chile could make great wine. I belong to a generation that no longer has to prove that. It frees us to ask not whether Chile can, but how far it can go.

[For me] wine is a way of connecting people to a place, to a story and to one another. So much of life now happens through a screen, and wine still gives us a reason to sit around a table, slow down and genuinely be with each other.

Chile has so many different expressions of place, from north to south and from the Andes to the coast, and I think that diversity is still greatly under-appreciated.

What I find particularly compelling today is the move towards greater freshness, precision and a deeper connection to where a wine comes from. I think Chile has a real opportunity to keep exploring how different soils, climates and sites shape the wines we make.

For me, the future is about understanding the land better, finding the right places for the right varieties, and farming in a way that protects its health and potential for future generations.

Within our family, I find the balance between tradition and looking to the future particularly rewarding. Seña was created in 1995 with the ambition of showing the world what Chile could achieve, for example. It has always been rooted in Aconcagua and farmed biodynamically. Thirty years on, that ambition remains as strong as ever.

The best dinners, for me, are relaxed and generous. I’d start with machas a la parmesana, a Chilean clam baked with Parmesan, alongside a good Chardonnay, [such as] our Las Pizarras, from the schist soils near the coast.

But the heart of it would be an asado. I love what happens around a grill: the meat cooking slowly, the conversation unhurried, the wine slipping naturally into the evening. Several cuts, plenty of vegetables, everything shared straight from the coals.

With that, I’d reach for a Cabernet-based red with a bit of age, a Viñedo Chadwick or a Seña, something with the structure to meet the char but the freshness to keep you reaching back for the glass.

Viñedo Chadwick with duck confit and a roasted pumpkin purée is one I come back to, and Seña with lamb is close to perfect. For something less expected, I love Viñedo Chadwick with bavette and a good béarnaise, or Seña with a well-seasoned steak tartare.

In whites, it is Chardonnay with seafood, and above all with sea urchin, which we eat a great deal in Chile. [I love] the freshness and texture of the wine against the richness and salinity of the sea.

The key is don’t rush. Chile is a very long, narrow country and the pleasure is in moving through it slowly, taking the time to experience how much it changes.

For wine, I would begin in Maipo, with the vineyards at the foot of the Andes and the cool mountain air coming down from the Cordillera in the evening. Then I would head to Aconcagua, where in a relatively short journey you move from the warmer, more sheltered heart of the valley towards the cooler air near the coast, and the wines change with it.

With a coastline like ours, seafood is essential, but so are Patagonian lamb and king crab, a proper empanada and traditional Chilean dishes. Eat what is local and you understand the place much faster.

In Santiago, visit Boragó for its singular expression of Chilean ingredients, landscapes and native products; Fukasawa for its refined Japanese cooking built on Chilean seafood; and Casa Las Cujas for its celebration of everything the sea brings in.

In London, I love how much of the world you can eat in a single week and how varied the drinking is. I am drawn to lists with a point of view. Clarette is a favourite: the atmosphere, the wines and food I always trust.

A few weeks ago, I went with my family to Hakkasan and we had the duck prepared several ways. I also love Japanese cooking, particularly Japanese-Peruvian cuisine. Nobu is a favourite for that.

And I have to mention [contemporary Chilean restaurant] Mareida. They capture so many of the flavours and ingredients I grew up with, and they do it beautifully.

My favourite wine moments have almost all been in vineyards. There is something about drinking wine in the place that made it. The one closest to me is Viñedo Chadwick. My family lived there, and it is where my grandfather once played polo.

The other is the hilltop at Seña, looking out over the Aconcagua Valley with Mount Aconcagua far in the distance. Some places simply change the way you experience the wine, and that is one of them.

I would not call myself a serious collector, but I love keeping bottles that carry a story. There are Chilean wines in there, of course, but I like discovering other regions, too.

For me, a cellar is not about owning the grandest labels. It is about having bottles you cannot wait to open, usually because of the memory attached to them. When I have children, I would like to keep a bottle from each of their birth years and open it on their 18th birthday.

I enjoy getting lost in a good book, trying different cuisines, discovering new restaurants and sharing long, unhurried meals with family and friends. I also love being by the sea. Music has always been an important part of my life and I still listen to it constantly, at home, in the car and before a tasting.