The press publishing things on the wines / the business of Garage. Third party expert opinions.
Wine Enthusiast nominates Garage Wine Company for New World Winery of the Year!
We are very content to share that we have been nominated for Wine Star Awards: New World Winery of the Year by Wine Enthusiast Magazine @wineenthusiast
A huge thank-you to our customers around the world who have put up with us all these years making small lots of wines from parcels with tough to pronounce names, and to the chefs who took interest in the flavours of the Secano Interior, and to the Somms who took people out of their comfort zone to try old vine Maule & Itata. Moreover to our neighbours, friends and farmers who have worked codo-a-codo to allow us nay encouraged us to do what makes us happy.
We are humbled and honoured to have worked on this revival with you : Cristian & Ester, Nivaldo & Otelia. Javier & Jose, Jolo & Robinson, Lucho & Yañez, Don Franco y Don Hugo, Don Miguel & Juvenal, Colarindo & José, Alvaro & Raul, Señora Teresa Luz y Veronica, Julio, Luchito, Caco, Mr King, Matt, Alejandro & Alex, Finlay & Ethan, Luis our bottle painter…our partners in Vigno @vignadoresdecarignan and in MoVI @movichile…and congratulations to fellow nominees!
Estamos muy contentos de compartir que hemos sido nominados para los premios @wineenthusias Wine Star Awards: New World Winery of the Year
Un enorme agradecimiento a nuestros clientes de todo el mundo que nos han aguantado todos estos años elaborando pequeños lotes de vinos con nombres difíciles de recordar, y a los chefs que se interesaron por los sabores del Secano Interior y de los Somms quienes ayudaron a sacar a la gente de su ‘zona de confort’ para probar la viña vieja de Maule e Itata.
A nuestros vecinos, amigos y viñateros que han trabajado codo-a-codo para permitirnos y animarnos a hacer lo que nos hace felices. Nos sentimos honrados y emocionados de haber trabajado para revivir el Secano Interior con ustedes: Cristian & Ester, Nivaldo & Otelia. Javier & Jose, Jolo & Robinson, Lucho & Yañez, Don Franco y Don Hugo, Don Miguel & Juvenal, Colarindo & José, Alvaro & Raul, Señora Teresa Luz y Veronica, Julio, Luchito, Kaco, Mr King, Matt, Alejandro & Alex, Finlay & Ethan, Luis nuestro bottle whisperer Lila…nuestros socios en Vigno @vignadoresdecarignan y en MoVI @movichile!
Felicidades a los otros nominados y nominadas!
- Published in Press / Prensa
Why there is a wine revolution taking place in the South of Chile
The South of Chile is ‘where it’s all happening’ from a wine buyer’s point of view, according to Mattia Scarpazza, head sommelier at Petersham Nursery. Travelling to Chile last year he visited Garage Wine, Pedro Parra, Pisador and Viña Capitán Pantene and discovered an exciting new breed of winemaker finding complexity, freshness and drinkability in their wines, through old vines grown in a more temperate climate. These wines are a far cry from the heavy Cabernet Sauvignons that many people associate with Chile and have a far more European profile and appeal.
“We were influenced by American and French consultants, the most crucial being Michel Rolland in the early 2000s. Those consultants were used to sunny, hot weather and heavy, black fruit Cabernets. With time, more winemakers travelled to Europe and other countries and realised that there were other styles of wines.”
There is a whole region in Chile where time seems to have stopped; where vines are tended by the older generation and wine is seen as part of a meal and not a lifestyle. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the country’s wine industry, in which less than 10 out of 400 wineries control 90% of the production.
In southern Chile there is an ongoing revitalisation of local wine traditions that date back to the first Spanish conquistadors who brought grapes with them on their galleons. I was first introduced to this part of Chile in 2018 when I took part in a masterclass on VIGNO wines, a southern Chilean association of old vine Carignan wines in Maule, led by Tim Atkin MW. I was left with the impression that these wines could have been made in Europe. (You can read The Buyer’s feature on the VIGNO masterclass here)
When I visited the country, and Maule in particular last year, I was able to speak to local vine growers and winemakers, and see first hand their deep-rooted respect for their heritage and sense of community.
Derek Knapp, owner and winemaker of Garage Wine in Maule, Pedro Parra (PhD in terroir from the Paris Centre of Agriculture), owner of Pedro Parra wines, Itata, Elena Pantaleoni, owner of Pisador, Maule and Raúl Narváez Reyes, owner of Viña Capitán Pastene, Malleco, all contributed to my understanding of why the region is resurging and why they chose to start their projects in what I consider to be one of the most dynamic areas of South America.
What is regarded as South of Chile?
On a regional map of Chile, you can see a long stretch of land between the Pacific Ocean on the west and the Andes on the East. Santiago sits somewhere in the middle of the 3000 kilometre-long country with appellations running from just outside the city, all the way down the Central Valley and beyond to those small dots sparsely scattered around the map.
South of Chile starts from Maule in the last stretch of the Central Valley to the marginal climes of Malleco. What changes is the influence of the coastal mountain ranges.
“Maule is in the oldest and lowest part of the coastal mountain range and the ocean influence is more prominent,” Derek Knapp says. This results in cooler temperatures and higher rainfall than the rest of the Central Valley, so vines can be grown without irrigation (also known as dry farming).
The movement to promote the South of Chile terroirs and heritage
The Central Valley is the core of Chile’s wine production, where the first investments in industrial scale wineries began.
“Chilean producers drank local wines and had no means of trying international wines. It was only when international consultants arrived that we were exposed to the taste of global wines,” Parra says, “We were influenced by American and French consultants, the most crucial being Michel Rolland in the early 2000s. Those consultants were used to sunny, hot weather and heavy, black fruit Cabernets. With time, more winemakers travelled to Europe and other countries and realised that there were other styles of wines.”
Pedro Parra recalls a visit with Marcello Rodamal to Albert de Villaine at Domaine de Romanee Conti in early 2004: “We realised then that we wanted to produce those wines in Chile. Once back home we brought our friends with us.” Parra was searching for wines that had complexity, freshness and drinkability, something that was unknown in Chile at the time.
On their return, Parra and Rodamal started various projects in the country, with a focus on the South of Chile, where they could find more suitable soils and climates. When I asked Parra why he decided to open his namesake winery in Itata, he explained “For me there are great soils all over Chile, but I wanted a place that had a cooler climate and cloud cover to mitigate the temperatures, which is more difficult to find. I found that in the South of Chile it starts from the southern part of Maule and gets more evident in Itata and as you move south.”
Derek Knapp, who has been working in Maule with Garage Wine since 2008, explains that when they arrived in the area, they were able to buy grapes from local producers for their wines, but he quickly realised that there was a need to bring the producers together and in 2010 founded the association MOVI (Movimiento de Viñateros Independents).
“We created the opportunity for smaller producers to sell their wines internationally, as the regulations weren’t designed around small businesses. MOVI is on a special board with the SAG, the regulatory body of agriculture, to simplify the paperwork and also teach its members how to survive as small sellers, to work with others, collaborate and do things that they can’t do on their own,” Knapp says.
MOVI started with 12 people and there are now 34 members, actively promoting their wines globally and in the UK.
The focus on old vines and varieties
Not many wine regions in the New World have thousands of hectares of vineyards planted with unique varieties that are local to the area. A lack of interest in them for centuries and the inconvenient position of the area meant that replanting wasn’t an option for the table wine grower. But things are looking up.
“Many owners of small vineyards in the area were at first sceptical, as most are quite old and few have ever shown interest in their grapes,” says Elena Pantaleoni, “Education is needed for both the international consumers of the wines of the South of Chile and the local growers.”
Pisador in Maule is Elena Pantaleoni’s second winery, the other being La Stoppa in Italy. She has been travelling to Chile since 1994, when her mother moved to the local area.
“I wanted to show the local farmers that there are people in the world who are interested in those wines and that there is no need to move. Part of my project is not to buy vineyards but to work closely with the local growers, show them, teach them and buy their grapes and then vinify them at my mom’s. We regularly invite journalists and buyers, as well as host harvest experiences for people from all over the world.”
Vine planting in Chile dates back to 1548, when the Spanish brought vines on their voyages to the New World. Some of those varieties have been lost, but some are still planted. Cinsault, Carignan, Muscat d’Alessandria and Pais (Mission) are being promoted and redeveloped with new impetus by Pisador, Parra and Garage Wines and many others. Younger vine-growers are starting to realise the potential of their land rather than leaving for the cities, a worrisome trend in the area. Could it be that Pais is what Chile is known for in the future?
Exploration of the far South of Chile
In more recent years, producers have been looking at areas that are even further south. Malleco being the most explored, Parra is very optimistic about its future: ‘The terroir is really interesting in my opinion. Malleco is where some of the best Chardonnay is produced. I compare it with Oregon. It can produce great Rieslings and Pinot Noir. The region is still not heavily explored and is waiting for more people to come, but there is movement.’
One of them, Raul Narvarez Reyes, owns Viña Capitán Pastene ‘Los Confines’, a 0.6-hectare vineyard planted with Muscat d’Alessandria, which, according to SAG records, is the southernmost production vineyard of Moscatel in Chile.
Reyes believes in the potential of the region to make very unique wines despite its challenges: “The weather conditions are not easy for viticulture and it’s far from the middle of the country. In Araucania (their sub-region) there are only 125 hectares of vineyards but we saw the opportunity to produce quality wines. We were attracted by the volcanic soil, the cold weather and the fact that there are few vineyards in the region, and we can produce fresh, aromatic wines.”
Thus, new planting and wineries are being led by internal producers who are seeing the potential of the region to make wines that would be impossible to produce anywhere else in Chile.
These parts of Chile are going to play a bigger role in representing Chilean wine to consumers. There is a great sense of willingness to see what can be done and most importantly there are people and associations that are looking to open to international markets, such as MOVI and VIGNO in Maule. It is possible to find a few of these wines in retailers across the country, but for buyers who are looking to expand their portfolios in South America, this is definitely somewhere to look at.
Garage Wines is available through Bibendum, Pedro Parra available through Liberty Wines, Pisador available through Les Caves de Pyrenees while Viña Capitán Pantene is not yet available in the UK.
- Published in Press / Prensa
La revolución rosada
- Published in Critics, Press / Prensa
Garage Wine’s Derek Mossman on building a brand on Instagram
As countries all over the world go into lockdown as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown, wine producers are having to turn to social media and online even more than normal in order to talk and tell their stories to their customers, both in the trade and their end consumers. It’s giving those winemakers who have already built up a strong social media profile a head start, like Derek Mossman of Garage Wine Company in Chile, who has more people following him on Instagram than the cases of wine he sells.
Derek Mossman uses traditional winemaking methods to make what he calls “coveted” and low intervention wines under his Garage Wine Company label from vineyards in Chile’s Maule and Itata regions. But it’s his personality and charisma that really shines through when he tells the stories of his wines and vineyards on social media (main picture by Matt Wilson).
You have now built a large following on social media, particularly Instagram, which must be pleasing to know so many people have invested time in what you are doing?
It’s terrific to know people are interested in what goes into a bottle of GWCowine. We have a lot of people into wine, as well as trade folks, following the work on the farms up close through the year. It is great to communicate more directly and honestly – without the pretence of ‘post-production’.
And you are right, we didn’t sell 5,000 cases last year, but we are growing and we did produce more than 5,000, so we shall be passing that 5k threshold tooafter a little more time in the bottle.
Did you mark the occasion?
Certainly, Pilar (my wife) promised me an ice cream. It is important to have metrics – and decent chocolate mint.
Who takes the pictures?
Just me on an iPhone for the most part, but I have a battered GoPro and sometimes those videos get uploaded too. We are trying to make a documentary about reviving the farms (with photographer Matt Wilson @matt.wilson.gc ) I am mostly shooting complementary sequences. Out–shots I think Matt calls them to help stitch things together.
We have worked hard with a select few in the community re-thinking how to do the farming best and this has me there when the work starts first thing in the morning. I see things that I just cannot resist capturing and like to get down on my belly to get a plough passing up close and that sort of thing. The peopleworking think I am nuts, but working with them like this elbow to elbow as we say in Spanish you develop a rapport — that rapport is the picture.
There are sounds too. Have you heard the sound in some of the videos? The way they whistle working with the horses is a veritable soundtrack.
How have you built your Instagram following to over ?
It is just a number I guess, but 5,000 followers are spread over most of the 14 countries where we ship. Many are in the UK, US andSweden but also Thailand, Poland, Holland and various other “lands” that are escaping me right now.Many of the people looking at the pics have a glass of ours in hand or they sell our juice, so the pictures help them understand what we are doing and more important why we do it. There is a vicarious quality about following along when you are up close and things are unpolished. It turns out grit and is more engaging than fluff.
5,000 cases of 9 litres is 45,000 litres which would be 60,000 bottles or about 95-100,000 kilos of fruit harvested. Dry-farming without irrigation in Maule or Itata with say (3 – 5 bunches of 180 – 350 grams each would be) 1.2 – 1.8 kgs per plant and with 3,500-4,200 plants on a hectare of old vines that would have us farming about 23 or 24 hectares in total.
This is where it gets complicated. These hectares are not all together in one place. We work small parcels reviving old vineyards in more than a dozen locals in Maule and Itata, with regenerative agriculture. Proper farming, that borrows from both new and old, makes for a healthier vineyard and wine— andcommunity and planet while we are at it! Each of our parcels [12 of them!] is bottled separately. These are the painted / silk-screened bottles. And then we make three Single Ferments Series wines which are co-fermented fruit from more than one vineyard.
Wait: 12 plus sites to make less than 5,000 cases? How the devil did you ever find your way to doing that?
We did not set out to make small lots. We began in the Maipo – in the comfort zone, happy to buy well-known fruit, but twice when we made a crackerjack wine, we were told that the fruit was no longer available to us the following harvest.
We had simply gotten the vineyard recognised and talked about, and the owners felt we had upstaged them. We insisted we should continue, and what is more put the vineyard name on everyone’s bottles (like Bien Nacido in California) but we were politely told, no thank-you.
We went to the Maule because we were frustrated with this status quo thinking. We went looking for unrecognised or under-appreciated fruit where we could work with smaller more humble growers and work together. We never imagined that smaller meant vineyards of one to two hectares taken care of by ploughmen farmers. Most did not have any D.O. paperwork for their Carignan, none had sold fruit for export wine. It was an experience – and then some. These families have been custodians of the dry-farmed Secano Interior for many years.
Today, we farm for more than just what we bottle. We sell fruit to others. We gained a reputation for polishing old-vine gems so now we started doing it for others as well.
And have you acquired any of these properties?
It is a long process, and there is nothing finalised yet, but today we have more than 40% of the acreage rented long-term. Renting guarantees the families a monthly income and we arm a team, a posse of people in the community to get the work done. In this way the younger generation can learn working next to the old hands. Pruning for example is like divining or water, it takes years to learn and we are bringing younger people up to do it well.
It sounds like a treasure hunt: what have you discovered lately?
We have just released our first Fieldcraft Bottling. It is a Semillon from the Isidore Vineyard (Isidore the patron Saint of the labourer who tends to the vines) and Bibendum Wine in the UK was the first of our importers to pick it up.
And what is a Fieldcraft bottling?
In essence it is about making a wine that would not normally get made. It could be a vineyard that is too far off the beaten track, or that would not fill a truck, or has no paperwork – so it is passed over and sold for bulk. In today’s world buyers want more for less and they would have the small modernise: spray instead of cultivate, scale instead of focus, above all reduce the cost of labour – and it’s in the very labour where you find the wisdom passed down through the ages: the fieldcraft is what we have come to call it. I know, any sane person would say 15 wines was enough (some of our importers go a bit crazy), but when we see a diamond in the rough we continue polishing!
You take a similar approach to your Instagram posts. You certainly don’t seem to “polish” your pictures – there is a certain grungy element to your images online?
Most wine pictures are taken when everything is done and perfect. It’s much more interesting to show the doing. A wise man once told me there is nothing to talk about until there is something in the bottle. He was right, but in the meantime you can show the making of in pictures!
You don’t go for pushing out scores you have got for your wines or critics tasting notes?
That isn’t our style. It just seems trite. Yes, the wines are well–recognised, but we would sooner let others point that out. It means more coming from them. And we do repost sometimes. I am Canadian originally, I’d have to apologise each time for such wanton displays of “look at me”.
Can social media make a difference for a small company?
I think if social media can split what were the two most successful democracies in the world, it can certainly have an effect on a small wine company. I am reminded when someone who questioned biodynamics asked how the moon can affect a vine? The answer was that if the moon can cause the tides and avalanches surely plants in a vineyard was light work.
Direct communication with thousands of our customers all over the world (not to mention our trade partners) is huge. Many of them comment, some are wise asses (some brilliant, some drôle) but I think everyone experiences something genuine albeit vicariously. It is simply more interesting to stick a GoPro camera in a picking basket and let it travel across a vineyard to the truck capturing people at work than to airbrush the perfect landscape. Showing the underbelly of real wine made naturally is a lot more interesting than buffed models or points and medals.
After our bushfires in 2017 when most chose not to publish disparaging images we demonstrated making the Phoenix Ferment (born of the ashes). I am sure that wine, our first white (Blanco de Tinto) would never have been picked up as it was in UK and other countries if we had not shown the making of online.
How do you measure the effectiveness of your social media? Do you analyse what people like/ don’t like and adapt what you do?
In a word: no. We work with intuition and by the seat of our pants, just like we do when we make wine. It is great to make contact with wine bars known and new to us and we like when people comment and shout out about the wines, but we do not measure in statistical terms.
So what is the most successful approach on Instagram?
Heaps of serendipity. I think viewers can smell planning and production and it is a turn-off.
But some of your shots are so well put together.
Those would be Matt Wilson’s genius. Everyone who knows his work know that he is an absolute nutter who could create rapport with a penguin in the Sahara. It is so well produced that the production disappears, but that is a photography pro at work.
How about advice to other wine companies out there on how to do social media well?
I do not pretend to have answers, and I do not give advice about winemaking or media or anything. Well, I do have two bits of advice that I give on occasion. “Don’t wait until you are 30 to buy a pickup truck and, and don’t wait until you are 40 to buy a tractor.“ But that is life advice.
Do you do Twitter as well? Is that a different approach.
I send from Instagram to both Twitter and Facebook — someone set it up with IFTTT (if this then that) and it seems to work. Two less things to do.
I wish we did not have to use Facebook and Instagram. I think they are products of an irresponsible company out of control in need of regulation and corporate responsibility, but they are the tools of the day. And tools are for the Davids as well as the Goliaths.
How has all of this affected your business
In the UK I think it is fair to say that sharing our works as it were helped to get Bibendum to bring in wines that they might not have otherwise. The Phoenix Ferment and more recently the Semillon from Isidore Vineyard for instance, or even more recently a Carignan called Vigno into their fine wine department for collectors and select on-trade.
In the US, I would say that it is a crucial part of the reason we are able to change the way we work. We are no longer working with a central importer, but rather selling into state by state with more direct attention and communication. The reason we are able to do this is because we have had direct contact and communication with somms and indies sharing our works for years through pictures, incited at least, online.
Finally, your wines are natural and yet do not use that moniker. In a word what kind of wines do you make?
Coveted. This is the only kind of wine that can command the price to allow us to go out and do it all again next year!
- Published in Press / Prensa
How ancient trumps modern
Derek Mossman Knapp of Garage Wines reports on how his agricultural community in Maule, southern Chile, has been coping with the pandemic. Well, is his conclusion.
The mammoth earthquake on the eve of the 2010 harvest left our vineyards unscathed and we simply got on with the vintage. Such a catastrophe was supposed to be a once-a-century event, but it was only seven short years later that bushfires came and burned tens of thousands of hectares all around us. Again we just got on with harvest.
Harvest has come again this year, but this time accompanied by an invisible calamity, the threat of the coronavirus.
I have been reading about many in the wine world who have as a result been forced to take a hiatus from work. Wine, like life, is inherently social. Many more have had their restaurants, pubs, wine bars and hotels shut. Others have succumbed to the unseen menace itself [see Ali Cooper’s accounts of grappling with COVID-19, for instance – JR]. But our lot in life as winegrowers at least keeps us busy and in the open air.
After a year’s work tending to the vineyards, we – and the many businesses small and large involved in our enterprise – have had to finish the job before shutting ourselves in. We did not throw caution to the wind. We worked with a closed group of pickers who live in what one could call a very rural setting. A community that is in its essence retired from world, almost sequestered in the hills around the villages of Sauzal and Puico.
Some of them periodically take toasted flour and/or cornmeal to market, but most labour on their land and go to town on horseback. Many have never adapted to vehicles and have continued to work the land with horses. It is a stark contrast to the world of business travel, supply-chain complexities and just-in-time delivery – things that the modern world took for granted and that have collapsed like a house of cards.
Living on the farm with a vegetable patch, some livestock, growing your own wheat (heritage seeds collected after threshing on site) allows these farmers to be tremendously independent. And this is what allowed us to continue working in the neighbourhood to get their grapes in and not lose the 2020 harvest.
As I wrote here after the 2017 bushfires, this old-school traditional agriculture was not only more resistant to the flames, but also served as firebreaks for other crops and prevented far greater damage. Again we see the wisdom of farming down the ages, or fieldcraft as we have come to call it, is proving more resilient than modern industrial agriculture.
It begs the question, why are any and all business/export/agricultural incentives in Chile, and elsewhere I am sure, always geared to technology and scalability? What about sustainability? Real sustainability and resilience, not just green-washing.
Given our experience, I say we should use this experience to take a step back and rethink before we rebuild. Perhaps it is time to respect traditional methods that have proven and re-proven their worth in the face of adversity.
I do not pretend to have foreseen or planned our path. Ours was a seat-of-the-pants strategy. My wife and business partner Pilar and I realised that one of the challenges working with small farmers was the picking. Farmers would ask all their neighbours to lend a hand, and the hands would often not be enough. It was quaint but it would take days and many runs to the cellar. At first we towed a small trailer behind a pickup, but soon we wanted to pick with more precision and/or pick more grapes in a day. We were just trying to make a better bottle of wine.
After more than one failed attempt by a farmer to raise a large enough group to harvest, we began organising our own crew who could travel from property to property with us. We had never had access to a selection table, so a crew of better harvesters capable of culling the bad bits before they went into the basket helped with the quality of the fruit arriving in the cellar.
This crew has come to serve not just for harvest, but also for pruning, cultivating, shoot thinning et al. For the people it has meant more work throughout the year, and for us it has been greater dependability and, most importantly, better quality fruit. This year it has meant a small closed circle of people picking farm by farm collectively, and we have got the harvest in safely. Some might think it would be cheaper, more efficient and easier if we hired people by the van-load who would come from farther afield. But these hands are not trained, they are just cheaper. And today, when we are all so conscious of patterns of virus transmission, they are a much higher risk for all.
At 7,000 cases a year, Garage Wines is a microcosm, but I would like to think our experience, albeit on a small scale, proves a point. Perhaps there are more microcosms that will help us to find a way out of this calamity that is stronger and better prepared to build a healthier world and a more resilient economy. Seeking better hands, instead of reducing the cost of labour, allows us to pick better fruit and make better wine – and to thrive in the face of adversity, safely, in the turbulent times we face.
As we endure this crisis we need to start looking at what is on the other side. How can we recalibrate for better, more regenerative farming and better work. If consumers make an effort to buy direct, to buy from independents with an eye to small or old-school producers, they will make a difference – not just in getting out of this pandemic, but also in future, giving proper work to farmers whom, let’s remember, we need three times a day. With them we can make our world at once more sustainable and more flavourful.
Get yourself a glass. Swirl and think. We have time.
- Published in Press / Prensa
La fórmula del éxito de Garage Wine Co.
- Published in Press / Prensa
The Buyer: Anita Jackson: time to put premium Chile on on-trade mapThe Buyer:
The spotlight falls on Chile this week with the Mercado Chileno tasting at London’s Truman Brewery on September 13. It promises to be a unique opportunity for UK buyers to see first hand the new styles of wine being made in different regions of the country. Wines that Anita Jackson, the UK head of Wines of Chile, believes are ideally placed to shake up and add real excitement to any premium wine list
Who better to give you a guided tour around what to expect at today’s Wines of Chile tasting than the head of its UK office, Anita Jackson, who marks your card on what to expect and where to go if your time is tight.
How was 2018 gone so far in terms of Chilean sales in the UK?
Chile sales in the UK have remained positive during 2018, in fact the exports stats are in growth by volume and value. Chile has 9% market share in the UK, sustaining its positive position for over four years. The UK is the third largest export market for Chile.
Which channels are seeing the most growth?
The channel with the most growth is the off-trade, which has remained in positive growth for at least three years now.
What steps and developments have you seen in the premium on-trade for Chilean wines this year and over the last 18 months?
It’s a slow process with the on-trade. We have to break the mindset in the on-trade that Chile is only good for great value house wine and to look beyond to the more premium offerings. It’s gradually happening, especially where there is more awareness from sommeliers of the regions, such as Leyda and Limarí and the amazing quality from these regions that do outperform more traditional regions that get regularly listed.
What are the key messages you want to get across to sommeliers and buyers about Chilean wine?
That Chile should be the go to country for premium wines, stylistically it has everything for everyone, elegant Chardonnay, Syrah/Shiraz that compete on the world stage, Sauvignon Blanc with personality that reflects the regions it comes from. And what’s more Chile is good business’ bottom line and margins.
Is the regionality route the right way to go or a case of winemakers telling their own stories?
Definitely, people want to hear about provenance. The regions in Chile are all distinctive in their style and the wines that they produce. Providing a story is a strong way for sommeliers to sell the wines.
Any particular developments that have happened in Chile that you would like to tell buyers about?
The buzz in Chile at the moment is coming from the south and varieties such as Pais, Cinsault, Carignan and Muscat from Itata and Maule. Chile has also defined it’s regions from east to west with the DO’s Costa (coastal), Entre Cordilleras (in between the mountain ranges) and Andes planted in the Andes foothills. Also with plantings further south into the Lake district and further north into the Atacama region, things aren’t standing still.
What styles of Chilean wine do you think are ideal for the premium on-trade?
Mainly the wines mentioned above, such as Syrah, Chardonnay, Carignan and Sauvignon Blanc. Pinot Noir also seems to get better every year.
And the price points?
Retail price points £10 – £15, that convert to a good price in a restaurant of £15 – £40.
Tell us about today’s Wines of Chile tasting in London. What can buyers expect?
We have a fantastic range of wineries on tasting with wines that cover all the regions, the new 2018 vintage is looking good so look out for these wines. We also have an Artisan area with a range of wines from boutique wineries and some quirky styles to try. Our themed tables reflect the terroirs of Chile, a range of wines that the wineries consider their top wines, and a range of award winning wines. If you come along in the evening we have a quiz to challenge what style of Cabernet Sauvignon you like.
There are also some new names to look out for and producers seeking UK representation. They are in the Artisan area and also two have taken their own tables, JA Jofré and La Ronciere. Both have some great wines that really express altitude, quirky blends and have good expressions of Semillon.
If your time was short what would be the key things you would recommend buyers doing at the tasting?
Check out the new 2018 vintage and particularly look for examples of Pais and Cinsault that show Chile’s light fresh drinking styles. Also take a look at the Rieslings being made in the South and make time to visit the Artisan area.
- The Wines of Chile takes place on September 25 at OXO2, Level 2, OXO Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, Southbank, SE1 9PH between 10am and 5.30pm. Trade visitors can register on the day. You can download the tasting catalogue here.
- Published in Press / Prensa
From the frontline of Chile’s fires
Derek Mossman for jancisrobinson.com
30 January Central Chile is currently suffering an unprecedented number of active fires – almost 80 – some of them affecting vineyards, including dry-farmed old-vines in the Maule, Itata and Bío-Bío regions where forestry companies have been planting indiscriminatingly for decades. Derek Mossman Knapp, who shared his account after the earthquake in the Maule back in 2010, reports on the fires from the perspective of the small farmer in the areas where he works, where the only green in the landscape after the fires have ravaged the forests are the age-old dry-farmed vines of the smallest producers in Chile – the vignerons of the Secano. He also took the devastating pictures.
Marco Antonio de Martino adds The situation keeps getting worse as the fires head southwards. Parts of Itata and Bío-Bío are under fire and it is very hard to predict how things will evolve. Luckily we haven’t had any major problems, but Portezuelo in northern Itata (many small old País vineyards there) is under fire currently. Many say the origins of the fires are intentional but police haven’t been able to determine this and new fires continue to appear.
Derek Mossman Knapp writes It’s dawn and much cooler today albeit still smoky. The calm lends time to make a plan for another day. Firebreaks have been dug with a borrowed digger and backhoe. Water from the cellar has been drawn and stored in the empty tanks (harvest is still a long way off). Every portable container available – from barrels and picking bins to the tractor used for spraying sulphur that has been adapted to disgorge water – is at the ready. Neighbours and friends volunteering are gathered hoping the afternoon sparks can be prevented from burning homes and winery installations. How many times have we heard wine folk speak about daily temperature variation and its positive effect upon the fruit? The current nightly cooling is the only thing slowing the flames down.
The fire will most certainly pass across the hills above us where forestry companies have a large tract of trees that stretch the 6 km westward to the approaching flames moving slowly across the cool dawn – for now without any tailwind from the coast.
It is hard to know where and when the flames and/or the burning ash will come down the hillside towards us. As the fire slowly approaches we make scouting missions up to the front line to see where and how fast the fire is advancing. Along the road fire brigades – from all over Chile now – advance ahead of the fire to protect homes along the roadside, but there is no means of putting the main fire out. Makeshift pools are filled by constantly arriving water trucks – most of these bulk-wine transporters – and the brigades then use the pools as their source of water.
On one of our many loops to survey the situation, a forestry firm´s truck with two white-helmeted supervisors stops us to ask how to get to a certain farm. They don´t know where their own farm is and have to ask the locals! I cannot help but think: where are the forestry firms and all of their resources? And how is it that with so many thousands of hectares of trees ‘under management’ that none of them seems to have had a plan for even a fraction of this? Their soil scientists knew full well that the pines have been drying the soils, just as surely as tobacco firms knew nicotine was addictive.
How did we ever allow such indiscriminate planting of a monoculture? What changes are needed in the wake of these fires? Surely the invisible hand of the open market has let Chile down abysmally.
Yesterday we spent the day in Sauzal and Puico further upwind behind the lines. There the fire had passed through the afternoon before and embers were still smoking. Small fires would begin again here and there, but would soon be doused by farmer´s children with buckets.
Here the locals had joined arms with neighbours to apply water and shovels of dirt on fallen flying ash, or pavesas. Various homes on the outskirts of town were lost because it was just too difficult to defend them with the meagre resources and water available, but these two towns at least were saved – unlike others close by.
Good friends with a winery in Villa Alegre sent four trucks full of water – trucks usually used for shipping bulk-wine. They played a large part in preventing a larger tragedy. The four had been distributed all around town and the water stored in barrels and bins alongside homes for fighting the fire. To make matters worse, there was no electricity as wooden power lines had come down with the fire. Poles with transformers still attached were scattered along the road burning ever shorter.
After two long nights of vigilance, and a day fighting flames, the sleep-deprived townsfolk walked about in the heat — almost 40 ºC — murmuring about wind direction and temperature. Some of the local volunteer fire brigades slept while others prepared for the afternoon. When smoke was spotted behind a surrounding hillside, word travelled across town and a small convoy of pickup trucks set out to extinguish the recurring flames.
These fires are different and they are worse. There are days of preparation full of angst before the flames arrive, then the flames themselves, and afterwards when the fires seem to have passed, they begin again, seemingly incessantly. The landscape is certainly more deeply scarred than in 2010. While the earthquake demolished homes, this time round people have managed to defend their homes from the flames, but their farms and much of what grew on them has been left scorched black. Fencing wire dangles between fields without the support of burned wooden posts. Gates have been transformed into ash. Animals that survived are still loose and are slowly being rounded up and taken to the town´s rodeo installations with everyone´s livestock mixed together.
The only green on the landscape here are the age-old dry-farmed vines of the smallest wine producers in Chile—the vignerons of the Secano. In some cases, the vineyards literally acted as fire-breaks.
Many vineyards old and new have not fared as well, however, and have been scorched – above the ground. It will take years to coax them back to proper production. Travelling from town to town with supplies of drinking water and hay bales for the animals one begins to recognise a pattern. In and around where we grow grapes at least, the vineyards that have been left uncultivated in recent years have fared far worse than those cultivated traditionally. The uncultivated had dried grass and weeds between the rows that grew up after an atypical December rain. These weeds drew the flames into the vineyard.
Perhaps this is the moment for the wine trade to reflect upon the low prices paid for this fruit over the past several years. Perhaps the industry doth protest too much when justifying low prices as being the product of an open market?
Let us remember that these age-old roots beneath the ground have been pushing life upwards every spring for more than a century. This small man-made calamity above ground will not stop them any time soon if the farmers have the will to lend purpose to this work. They will be back. It is telling that next to the green revolution´s ruined fast-rotation forests, these meek vines stand tall and green, a testament to traditional agriculture. Many crops have burned on these mixed farms and many vines have been singed around the edges, but these vines will give fruit this harvest.
Just as there were striking pictures of cracked roads and fallen adobe homes in 2010, today there will be haunting images and video clips of burning vines. But after this hunger for sensationalism and accusations directed at the politicians, what will be done? What will we learn from this?
Land or hand?
When tasting wine people often ask the question of ‘land or hand?’ Man´s hand was surely involved in the starting of these fires. It is difficult not to think that some part of this was avoidable – the hand of man is all over it. What is clear, even amid the smoke, is that even with billions of dollars’ worth of trees planted all over the region, no one had a real plan. It is the pines and eucalyptus of the forestry conglomerates that spread the fires. While their tree tops are green, the approaching heat quickly dries them out and then – poof! – the fire destroys the trees row by row. But the havoc has wrought damage far beyond the man-made forests.
Shame on these firms for not being better neighbours. It seems that in the crux of the moment the social responsibility and sustainability promised in their boardroom and on their website is far from their true colours based upon the actions of these days. Many more fire breaks were required, as well as more stand-by equipment, better training, and clear calls to action. In future Chile will need a proper contingency plan that perhaps should include a crowd-based Waze-type of app to allow the crowd on the ground to outsmart the erratic fires together. Central political command is no match for fire.
Conclusions
We have before us a tragedy both social and environmental, but perhaps with time if we choose to look a little deeper we can see a small piece of much larger challenges with ramifications far beyond Chile.
The question of scalability within the green revolution needs questioning. There are lessons from traditional agriculture to be applied. While it is natural for any young industry to ignore the past while growing up, eventually one must return to embrace it. Industries planting monocultures at scale may offer jobs and a certain progress, but how can we make these sustainable in the long term?
Water rights in Chile need serious revision and discussion. How can so much water have been tacitly given to the forestry firms for 100 years under Decree 701? Was there really enough water in these valleys to have given so much away? How is it that modern vineyard plantings destined to be machine harvested in these areas have access to water rights, when small farmers are forbidden from digging a new or deeper well? The runoff waters, the property of these ancestral farmers, are diminishing year on year as the newly planted forests slurp up the rains. And yet the original farmers have no access to water from deeper down on their own lands as fair compensation. If they had had access they could have done more to put out these fires.
I wish to acknowledge the admirable works and heroism of the volunteer fire brigades of Chile and the tremendous crowd-sourced relief efforts that arrived with help in the zone of the fires afterwards. In more than 12 years trundling about on these small roads of the Maule I have never seen so much traffic. I saw convoys of pickup trucks and cars full of the things the people will need to rebuild and get on with their lives. Some look organised, but many seem to have come of their own volition. The capacity of ordinary people in Chile to organise and get going in the face of hardship is astonishing.
I wrote this from my own experiences in these days in the Maule, but the fires are by no means limited to this one area that I know. While I recognise that any and all errors in the above are solely my own, I must share credit for the ideas and experiences shared by many people: Felipe Zuñiga of VidSeca in Cauquenes, Renan Cancino of Huaso de Sauzal, Daniela Lorenzo of Gonzalez Bastias, Andres Sanchez of Vigno Vignadores de Carignan, Daniela at Gillmore Vineyards, Sergio Amigo at Cancha Alegre, Eduardo Jordan at De Martino, Cristian Llanos in Portezuelo, ploughman extraordinaire Cristian Cancino in Puico, Waldo Orellano in Truquilemu, and Nivaldo, Otelia and family in Sauzal among many more.
- Published in Editorial, Press / Prensa
The Buyer: Garage Wine Co’s Derek Mossman Knapp on pioneering Alt-Chile
The new Alt-Chile wine movement is a million miles away from the supermarket wine shelf, with exciting wines and winemakers looking to offer something very different from Chile, says Derek Mossman Knapp of The Garage Wine Co.
As a Canadian winemaker you have set up home and your winemaking life in Chile. Why did you decide on Chile and how do you see its future?
Yes, I am very positive on Chile. I have put my heart, sweat and pocketbook into making some of the lesser known bits into something more.
For several years now (more than a decade) things have been growing and evolving, and today next to what is a very successful “industry” (their word not mine), there is a burgeoning space where the smaller, viñerons of many stripes and shapes, are thriving.
Let’s call it Alt-Chile — Alternative Chile. There are so many groups now. Initially there was MoVI, El Movimiento de Viñateros Independientes, which effectively democratised the possibility of ¨small wine¨. Then Vigno, Vignadores de Carignan, came along in the Maule pushing the envelope for a group of wines associated with origin.
After that we had the Canchos Deslenguados (“pigs with loose tongues”) wine event (a kind of a Lollapoluza of wine) and natural wine was recognised in Chile.
Now there are so many AG’s or Asociaciones Gremiales (modern day guilds) that I find it hard to keep track. Alt-Chile is a tremendous rennaissance, and one that contributes to the tremendous mosaic of wines that Chile has to offer.
Change is positive. See how quickly the mainstream begins to adopt ideas from the fringes. Various large wineries today are interested in Pais and Cinsault— this is natural and it is good. The trade has grown up, and part of growing up is rejecting the past, and then promptly embracing it. What Miguel Torres is doing with Estelado (fizz made of Pais) is fantastic and makes a bonafide difference in the community.
Most all large wineries have their “small line” where they have armed a “winery within a winery” and promise artisan style wines. I am not being facetious. I think it is positive.
You work with Bibendum in the UK. Are people ever skeptical about you working with someone so big?
I think that would be envy wearing a cloak of skepticism. It’s true Bibendum has grown, but if I am their smallest supplier I’m proud to be so. They believed in us from the beginning and I think together we have opened up spaces in UK trade for the Maule, for different varieties (Carignan) and yes: even for Chile. I have the best job in the world being able to work with small viñerons in Maule and Itata and Bibendum has clients like Hand and Flowers, Gingerman Group. I could go on…
What most people do not imagine is that Michael (Saunders – the big boss) has been with us in person on horseback in the deep Maule. Moreover the ethical trading section of Bibendum purchased a good deal of wine “en primeur” Chilean wine after the big earthquake in 2010. It was a means of helping us invest in the community at a crucial juncture for these viñerons. Along the way Willy, Andrew, Zack and the London team have built a trade that connects with small viñerons in the Maule and Itata with one of the toughest markets in the world. It’s amazing.
And to this day every vintage we do a special bottling of one of the en primeur properties and Walker Wodehouse sells this Ploughmen Series exclusively.
You travel a lot? How important is UK in the grand scheme of things for The Garage Wine Co?
The UK is an important market for us. It is a competitive market that helps us learn where the world wine trade is going. Many think it is time to be focusing on Asia today, and we do sell a few pallets in China and Korea, but it is more important to grow in the UK. If you can make it there you can make it anywhere.
I heard you at a tasting talking about native yeasts and you said it was akin to ¨breast feeding a new born¨. Can you explain?
It is akin— absolutely. Using native yeasts is like choosing natural breast milk for a new born. There is no guarantee the infant will cruise through adolescence without worry, but there’s no better start to life. That said, there are wineries where for whatever reason the winemaker cannot use his or her native yeasts, and we should be supportive of them, knowing that science has designed modern supplements, but these are no replacement for the real thing.
And what are the advantages?
Natives contain more different yeasts that work at different stages and lend greater complexity I think. They also work better with higher-acid wines like Maule Carignan, and they are less efficient in converting sugars to alcohol, thus creating better balanced wines. I could go on!
Why were selected yeasts ever developed to be “more efficient converting sugar to alcohol” anyway? Since when do we want a more alcoholic wine? Since when is more alcohol better?
How did you decide which grape varieties to focus on?
It has never been about the grape varieties. If you look at one of our labels there are five lines of text and the variety appears on line four. For us it is all about place, vineyard and viñeron.
For example:
Lot# 47
Truquilemu Vineyard
Empedrado D.O. Maule
Carignan field-blend
2014
We make nine wines from specific vineyard sites or ¨Vino de parcela individual¨. These are anywhere from three quarters of a hectare to a hectare and a half. Each site is bottled separately – we fill between 2,800 bottles and 7,000 per site.
Should we have blended them into fewer branded wines and reducing the number of SKUs we produce to improve efficiency? No. That’s just not what we are all about, and there are already plenty in the world.
Tell us about your appearance on ITV’s Wine Show with Joe Fattorini?
It was a terrific experience to be able to share that side of the company with a larger audience. I admire the lengths both Joe Fattorini and producer Melanie Jappy went to to get the story they wanted. The story of Matt Wilson (photographer) and I trying to finish his book in the weeks after the quake was seemingly far-fetched for a wine programme to say the least. I am told it made good TV.
It was a kind of blind audition. I was taken to the Ampersand thinking I was trying to open a smart hotel account in Kensington. The producer asked me questions about Chile and the like and I began to fret about wasting so much time telling anecdotes about Chile when I had only the one more day to work the market in London. Then I started talking about after the quake and suddenly I realised I was storytelling to a scriptwriter and not a wine buyer.
Months later a small team came out to film in the Maule— it was a trip. I had no experience and as my wife would say ¨a face for radio¨. Watching it almost a year later (Episode 5 is without doubt the best episode!) I can see what they wanted to do all along. The programme helps to open wine up to a broader audience and Joe, a relative unknown before the experience, is terrific at making wine more interesting to a wider audience. Will he become the Jamie Oliver of wine is not for me to say, but Lord knows the trade needs everyone who can help convince more people to enjoy wine for the beverage that it is.
I am remembering a column of Andrew Jefford’s a few years ago when he probed into the effect of the wine blog and the democratising of wine writing. Jefford asked whether blogs and internet wine community would open wine up to a broader audience, or reduce it to a closed circuit of buffs and geeks and label-drinkers.
Amidst the Tsunami of information about wine online today I think The Wine Show stands out as a positive force that takes wine to more people in an honest and engaging way. I think it gets more people spending a little bit more on a bottle, and this allows them access to artisanal producers and a chance to get in touch with their planetary side. Wine does not have to be terribly expensive to be smart. It is not a luxury product; its nourishing. “Vino es un alimento” as we say in Chile.
You have a great deal of energy about the wines you make and where you sell them. What inspires you?
I worked for years as a creative [misfit] in Chile. I thought some great ideas were put forth that might have begun fascinating endeavours, but they were systematically thwarted by the powers that be because they were too “different”. Chileans refer to “lo que se quedo en la tintera” literally meaning the ideas that stay stuck in the inkwell.
Not any more. Today I am independent and I am inspired by the past as much as I am about the future with the freedom to be able to create and craft whatever and with whomever I like. No more family-office boards of directors diluting ideas until they comfortably resemble what the neighbours are doing. We just do it.
What are your plans and dreams for the future for The Garage Wine Co?
We have recently introduced the Single Ferment Series. My wife Pilar is taking charge of these wines working with fruit that our same growers farm, but co-fermenting fruit from various. Each fermentation, rather than site, becomes the wine’s name. For example, from 2015 we have: The Soothsayer’s Ferment – Cinsualt 2015 and First Salvo Ferment – Pais 2015.
Why Soothsayer’s Ferment?
My wife mocked my appetite for just one more trailer load of old-vine fruit. She said: “I have no idea what winery you are intending to ferment this fruit in, but at this rate it sure as shiznet isn’t going to fit in ours.”
She was right, and we had to put the newly harvested bits on top of the other in a tanks already fermenting. It was literally the Ides of March when it occurred the first time, so the soothsayer name seemed fitting. In 2016 I convinced her to buy even more fruit.
- If you want to know more about Derek Mossman Knapp and his pioneering winery, The Garage Wine Co, check out its website or talk to Bibendum about its range in the UK.
- Published in Press / Prensa
Post-quake news from Chile contd
Derek Mossman for jancisrobinson.com
Derek Mossman Knapp writes on behalf of all the Chilean wineries affected by the earthquake:
Some first impressions Santiago & Alto Maipo
Wine is not a very earthquake-proof business. It’s liquid and however it is stored it’s messy when the earth shakes at 8.8. Legs on stainless steel tanks buckle, barrels stacked on racks in barrel rooms teeter, and crash and literally bounce. Glass bottles make a big bloody mess. The deep crimson colour all over the floor makes everything all the more surreal.
Day 1: Saturday – 3:30 am Santiago
The windows rattled, the earth moaned, then Santiago shook hard. We grabbed the kids and rushed out of the house crashing against the walls unable to stand up during the quake. We spent the better part of two real minutes holding on to the door-frame and the kids; now without electricity.
My wife’s Chilean earthquake reflexes soon kicked in and we swiftly filled the tub with water (now brown) found the torches/flashlights, turned off the gas and cleaned up the broken glass. Afterward, I sat outside in the car listening to the radio and realised Santiago hadn’t received the worst of it; Maule had. The epicentre was close to Cauquenes. We make an old-vine Carignan from there and have many friends in the business with old adobe cellars and homes. Then the hillside of San Cristobal behind our house slid and a dust cloud hung over the neighbourhood.
Power was restored at dawn. Highway overpasses and clover-leaves down all around Santiago were the first images on the TV. Internet came back mid- morning and twitter connected me to others. The phones were useless.
7 is a big shake, but Santiago for the most part fast became a bubble of ‘normality’. On Saturday authorities asked people who were okay to stay at home. Having watched the first images of the roads on the news, I saw that it clearly wasn’t wise to go out in the car and be the first to discover the heaved pavement and/or a fallen overpass.
So we swam with the children in the neighbour’s pool. The pool was substantially emptied by the quake. My three year old’s toes didn’t touch the surface as he tried to dip his feet. Freezers had thawed in the night without power so the menu was ‘Angus beef before it spoils’. All the while we knew friends were having a brutal time of it. Our little lunch party next to the pool was odd and somehow distorted. We were trying to be normal for the children. The earth continued to shake in aftershocks. Our minds were in the Maule and Concepción with friends. No word from anyone. Authorities asked all to refrain from using the telephone unless absolutely necessary. We managed to e-mail dozens of friends and spoke to a few who’d heard from others.
At nightfall, doors were left open (so as not to jam in the event of…). The kids didn’t want to sleep.
Day 2: Sunday – Pirque – Alto Maipo
Yesterday Sunday I worked with the staff of William Fèvre Chile, in the Alto Maipo saving barrels one by one. If Saturday was odd, Sunday was surreal. The fumes of the propane forklift in the confined cellar made my head spin. There was no power, no fan, no ventilation, just more aftershocks – 3s and 4s now.
En route south there was little traffic and lots of big cracks in the roads. Gas stations had lines for gas of 50-60 cars, and people were lined up everywhere to buy pan amasado (country bread) on the road-side. In Pirque approaching the bodega a corn silo leaned over like that tower in Pisa. Driving in, one could smell the first waft of winery hundreds of metres from the cellar door. Most of the William Fèvre staff had already spent Saturday cleaning up.
The first hand had arrived at dawn passing by the cellar on his bicycle when he heard what he thought was water running. Two tanks were damaged (he would find another later) so he performed a modified Australian trick, emptying from the leaking tank into an empty one with hose and gravity. When the two tanks evened out, half in half, he changed the hoses again and saved half of the remaining half into yet another tank. Effectively he saved three quarters of not one but two tanks of Grand Cuvée 2008 before the sun had come up and without power. He’s 21 and his name is Cristián. (The rest of Saturday was spent cleaning up broken tanks, moving the contents of the stainless with buckled legs and mopping up two more.)
Today, Sunday, it was time for the barrel room. Dozens of barrels had toppled down onto others breaking barrel heads and joints and with bungs popping all over.
With the help of two very skilled forklift drivers and a dozen dedicated winery hands, we started bringing the teetering barrels down to the ground and organising them by lot in the main reception area. Work went on and on for hours. We were making a dent and saving dozens of barriques. We were all on an adrenaline rush. At some point the air quality got worse but no one noticed. At one point I was so dizzy I walked outside into the breeze to see the managing director Gonzalo Pino storming up in his pickup with drinks and bread. Then we all sat around enjoying Bilz (awful Chilean cream soda) from the stemware from the tasting room and slowly, in a kind of tired communion, we found our way to smiles and then humour– odd yet somehow cathartic.
Day 3: Monday – San Juan – Alto Maipo
Today I managed to get gas and am heading back out to Pirque. There is a lot more work to be done. An irrigation canal has been seriously damaged by a slide. We’ll be walking along the banks of the Maipo inspecting and clearing rocks out before it can be reopened.
We’ve heard from more people in the south. Many people are missing including several hands in Caliboro. All over Chile more than 700 have died, mostly from the various tsunamis, but many others under falling adobe bricks of old, country homes. It is a small number. Chile was very well prepared. Consider for a minute that this quake was the fifth biggest earthquake in recorded history.
En route news arrives from Viña Rukumilla, one of our partners in MOVI, of the passing of José Pizarro, their winery’s first-hand and maestro extraordinaire since the building of the cellar. Suddenly I must slow for a rather BIG bump between two sections of pavement on the 5 Sur.
What we lived through in Chile over the weekend was a very big bump. It cannot be measured in lost litres, nor by insurance adjusters, nor even by mister Richter himself. Hundreds of people living earnest and vibrant lives just days ago: preparing for harvest, vacationing on the sea coast, and doing so many other things, are no longer with us tonight. My humblest thoughts and prayers are with their families. I can only begin to imagine what all of them have have been through but, tomorrow, early, the Cristiáns and the Josés will be hard at work rebuilding – perhaps one of the most naturally spectacular countries on earth. A seismic country of quakes and volcanoes with crazy geography, far away, that most only know for its fruits and wines.
Chile will rebuild what mother nature broke this past Saturday. We’ll do it whilst we change governments and whilst Chilean soldiers continue to head up the mission in Haiti. We shall rebuild, where and what is necessary, industry by industry, town by town, roof by roof, and barrel by barrel. You can help us because Chile is a country of traders. They say we have more free trade agreements than any other nation on earth. Let’s see. Chilean products travel all over the world and most likely they are on the shelf just down the street from where you are now. What we need most right now is your business, so we can rebuild and yes, bounce back.
- Published in Editorial, Press / Prensa