Garage Wine Company Garnacha Field Blend Lot 99 2018
Type: Red
Country: Chile
Region: Maule
Grape Variety: 100% Garnacha
Viticulture: Certified Organic
Ratings: 94 Robert Parker Points
Climate: Mediterranean with high levels of rainfall
Terroir: The vineyard is next to the Perquilauquen River which flows from the Coastal Range East towards the Andes and creates a very unique terroir that is at once alluvial and granitic– very rare, passes through old Calivoro bringing granitic silt. This vineyard has two deep inlets on each side that lend it terrific drainage. The Perquilauquen is wide through this section like a narrow lake and this water body lends the fruit cooler conditions than neighboring Melosal or Loncomilla
Winemaking: Naturally fermented with native yeasts. Vinified in open-top fermenters, caps were punched down by hand and manually pressed. Aged in third-use (or more) barrels over two winters
Color: Intense purple
Nose: Perfumed with beautiful floral notes
Palate: Earthy with sinewy tension, racy acidity over fine tannins
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.