Garage Wine Company Bagual Vineyard Carinena Garnacha Mataro Lot 96 2018

Type: Red
Country: Chile
Region: Maule
Grape Variety: Carignan, Garnacha, Mataro
Viticulture: Certified Organic
Ratings: 95 Robert Parker Points

Climate: Mediterranean with high levels of rainfall
Terroir: Grapes are produced from more than 75-year-old vines that grow on granitic soils or subsoils. The vineyard is located on the Cordillera de la Costa mountains and the vines are grown in the 7 rows at one end of the Truquilemu vineyard
Winemaking: Fermented with native yeast, the skins are manually punched down in small batches (sometimes first crushed by foot), then pressed in an old-fashioned basket press, aged in older barrels to avoid covering the fruit and add only small amounts of sulfites after fermentations are done

Color: Intense ruby
Nose: Plum and berry character, spicy, floral and subtle
Palate: The palate is sinewy, with nice acidity and the fine tannins of the Garnacha, perfectly integrated oak and a very tasty finish

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.