Garage Wine Company Cru Vigno 2019

Type: Red
Country: Chile
Region: Truquilemu and Maule
Grape Variety: Carignan Field Blend
Viticulture: Certified Organic
Ratings: 98 Robert Parker Points

Climate: Mediterranean climate with warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters
Terroir: Grapes are produced from 70+ years old vines
Winemaking: Ancestral farming by hand and horse. Naturally fermented with native yeasts in open-top fermenters. A small portion was made with whole stems stomped with clean feet. Aged in third-use barrels for 2 years

Color: Deep purple
Nose: Spice and mineral-accented aromas of red and blue fruit joined by slowly emerging violet and rhubarb notes
Palate: Full-bodied with well-integrated tannins over notes of energetic black raspberry, spice cake and floral pastille flavours. Finishes smooth, sweet and long, with floral and spice notes and a gentle grip

About the Winery:
Garage Wine was literally started in a garage in 2001, by Etobicoke expat Derek Mossman and his wife Pilar Miranda. Since then, the dynamic duo handcrafted wines from a series of individual vineyards located in the Maule and Itata Valleys, in the south of Santiago, Chile.

Garage Wine Co makes wines from a series of individual parcels, small lots/bottlings of 8-22 barrels that include a series of dry-farmed field blends of Carignan, Garnacha, Monastrell, País, Cinsault and Cab Franc grown on pre-phylloxera rootstock with small farmers in the Maule and Itata. Each wine is from a 1-2 hectare parcel in a different place.

Over the years working in the community they have raised a veritable posse of vineyard hands whose skills are working the vineyards the old way / the traditional way– originario. The vineyards are on the old coastal range of mountains closer to the Pacific and have granitic soils with cracks for roots to get deep down into.

Derek and Pilar think the farming practices that have evolved over generations have as much to do with the wines’ personalities as the soils. All the wines are made by hand with native yeasts in small tanks, punched down manually and pressed out in a small basket press. The Garage Wine Company is still very much a DIY operation and we still tow much of the crop back to the winery in trailers behind trusty pickup trucks 2,000 kilos at a time.