Sustainable

About the Winery

Garage Wine Co.

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 handcraft 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.

When GWCo. speaks of the provenance of these wines they mean more than just the geological terroir. 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. GWCo 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.

About the Winery

Bideona

Bideona owns or manages over 300 parcels of extraordinary vines in villages throughout the Rioja Alavesa, the coolest, smallest and most Atlantic sub-zone of Spain’s most famous wine region.

The vineyards of the Rioja Alavesa are defined by parcels of old bush vines planted on terraces or hillside slopes with a high percentage of limestone. Located in the foothills of the Sierra Cantabria, Bideona’s vines have an average age of 50 years and many were planted in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, before high-yielding clones became available.

Bideona puts the focus firmly on terroir by making each wine in its Vino de Pueblo range as a field blend of Tempranillo and other native varieties from plots in an individual village. Each is named with an acronym – L3Z4 for Leza, L4GD4 for Laguardia, S4MG0 for Samaniego and V1BN4 for Villabuena – owing to DOCa Rioja regulations that only allow village names to be marked if both the winery and the vineyard are in the same location.

“Bideona’s reason for existence is to make wines that show the personality of the Rioja Alavesa and its historic wine villages” states company co-founder and director, Andreas Kubach MW. “We have access to a wealth of diverse plant material in our parcels of old vines, which we believe contributes to the complexity of the wines as well as the differences between villages.”

Mas Carlot

Mas Carlot is situated in the south of the Rhône Valley, extending across 76 hectares of pebbly land southeast of Nîmes. Originally a 17th century farm, this beautiful estate was resurrected in the 1960's by the Blanc family—it is currently run Cyril Mares of the neighbouring and equally reputable property, Mas Bressades.

The appellation of Costières de Nîmes used to be considered part of eastern Languedoc but the climate, soil, topography and wine are far closer to those just over the river in the Southern Côtes du Rhône. It is now a region very much on the up and is widely recognized as a great source of excellent value wine.

Punset

While the vineyards that form Punset have been farmed by the Marcarino family for generations, it is truly thanks to Marina and her incredible energy that the estate is how it is nowadays. In the 1980s, she decided to pursue organic farming – a demanding choice that was rewarded by becoming the first estate to receive the organic certification in Italy. Her passion for the soil and the environment led her to embrace biodynamics and the agronomic philosophy of Manasobu Fukuoka. From one of the healthiest vineyards in Italy, Marina crafts wines that brim with life, energy, and pure terroir.

Known for the very first certified organic Barbaresco of Italy, Marina continues to show the world that you can preserve tradition and think of the future simultaneously.

About the Winery

Bodegas Exopto

Exopto is Latin for “to long for” or “to desire greatly” and it is the dream of Frenchman Tom Puyaubert and his family to endeavor to craft and assemble wines where the whole adds up to more than the sum of their parts.  Tom relocated from France to Rioja in 2000 after falling in love with the region and working for the French cooperage Saury as its Spain representative.

When Tom began Exopto, he wanted to do a project that produced wines within this historical context of Rioja - combining both worlds in a unique way.  His idea is to remain true to the blending of the principle grape varieties and to do so from the best terroirs/villages for those varieties crossing sub-regions of Rioja.   Each wine though, has a majority of a different principle grape – showcasing that variety specifically within the context of a blend.  The viticulture and winemaking model is that of the “vigneron” days – small plots of vines in the extremes, wild yeast fermentation in concrete or old oak vats and then aging in a way to showcase the fruit, minerality and terroir not the wood or aged flavours that people often associate with Rioja.