Wine with Leslie: Three of my favourite Chilean wines to buy in Ireland

How a teenage obsession with The Clash led our wine critic to Chile, its politics, and its wine

"Around a quarter of the wine we drink in Ireland is Chilean but most of it is inexpensive Sauvignon, Cabernet and Merlot — reliable, tasty and remarkably consistent, but not always the most interesting wine to cover on this page."

I blame Joe Strummer. 

As a young teenager I was an obsessive fan of the Clash, and it was through Joe’s lyrics for the song 'Washington Bullets' on 1980’s Sandinista album that I first heard of the poet-singer Victor Jara and President Salvador Allende, two of the victims of the Chilean coup that brought Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship to power.