- Carignan
- Dry
- Residual Sugar: 1.9 g/l
- Medium Bodied
- 750ml
- 12.8% alc./vol
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.
Press Reviews
Robert Parker
97 points
The 2019 Truquilemu Vineyard follows the path of the brilliant 2018 with moderate alcohol (13.1%) and great freshness and acidity, a tad below in refinement (within the authentic and rustic character of the zone and the wines), from the old vines on the Coastal Range mountains where the soils have lots of quartz, full of crystals on decomposed granite with silty and sandy texture. The cool place and the soil provide very fresh wines even in warmer and drier years, worked following ancestral traditions and pruned with the moon cycles but not to a modern biodynamic calendar, but rather with local custom. Tasting the different wines from the same vineyard from 2018 and 2019 was fascinating, and the wines didn't stop changing in the glass for hours. I think all these wines are going to develop nicely in bottle. 10,021 bottles were filled in January 2021.
Deschorchados
94 points
Garage Wine selects vines from a small 2.5-hectare vineyard planted on granitic soils in the Truquilemu area about 75 years ago. Most of it is cariñena, although there's some syrah and monastrell grafted onto old país vines, too. What these vines give is a vibrant and tart red cherry juice, a carignan that clearly represents the path this grape has taken in Chile, from the time its wines were a mass of cement with extra-concentrated ripe fruits to now, when it has become a refreshing red to accompany food. And this is one of the best examples of that new style.