Garage Wine Company Old Vine Pale Rose Vineyard Empedrado 2021

Type: Rose
Country: Chile
Region: Maule
Grape Variety: Carignan, Mataro
Viticulture: Certified Organic
Ratings: 93 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: Naturally fermented with indigenous yeasts. Fermented skinless in two parts: part of the blend pressed as a white and part made as a skinless red. Subsequently aged in barrels during one winter – barrels of fourth use or more

Color: Light red
Nose: Vivid notes of pomegranate, blueberry, wild strawberry and herbal citrus
Palate: Very unctuous on the palate, with crunchy forest fruits and linear acidity to combine with heavy phenolics

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.