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Garage Wine Co 3.0Garage Wine Co 3.0

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  • Wines
    • Cru
      • Cru Truquilemu
        Carignan
      • Vigno
        Carignan
    • Limited Release
      • Isidore Vineyard
        Semillón – #F_
      • Truquilemu Vineyard
        Carignan – #_7
    • Parcels / Vinos de Parcela
      • Pirque Vineyard
        Cabernet Franc – #_0
      • Reelegido Vineyard
        Cabernet Sauvignon – #_1
      • Las Higueras Vineyard
        Cabernet Franc – #_2
      • Old Vine Pale
        Carignan, Mataró – #_3
      • Renacido Vineyard
        Cabernet Sauvignon – #_4
      • Sauzal Vineyard
        Carignan, Garnacha, Mataró – #_5
      • Bagual Vineyard Caliboro
        Carignan, Garnacha, Mataró – #_6
      • Truquilemu Vineyard
        Syrah – #_8
      • Bagual Vineyard Caliboro
        Garnacha Field-blend – #_9
    • Single Ferment Series
      • País-Cariñena
        Phoenix Ferment
      • País
        215 BC Ferment
      • País
        AlMaule
      • Cinsault
        Soothsayer´s Ferment
        • Cinsault
          Recodo Vnyrd
          Lot 98
      • Quinto Cuarto
  • Works
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Garage 1.0 legacy texts

Early On  Lots # 1 – 7

We began Garage Wine Co. with the idea of making wine on a personal scale, by hand with the family. It was physical work, and a therapeutic complement to the hustle and bustle of the then new millenium. Few in Chile were they familiar with the tradition of celebrated companies having begun “in the garage”. Back then wineries in Chile were corporate affairs, named after celebrated last names or saints. And they were generally owned by clubby families with double rr’s in their surname. Once a rather closed circle, much has changed. We went to work and made barrel by barrel with money from the family coffers selling just enough bottles amongst friends and family that we could justify doing it all over again the following year. Soon “the hobby” grasped a firmer hold on family finances and we began to sell wine to strangers who contentedly scooped it up for twenty dollars a bottle. Then an article appeared in El Mercurio newspaper about a “coveted urban myth” of wines made in a garaje. So we patented the name Garage Wine Company.

At the time it was tremendously difficult to get any supplier to take us seriously at our scale. As we had no forklift, the bottle makers chose simply to not answer our mails. The capsule maker wanted a minium 10,ooo piece order. (We had 567 bottles.) And so on… These attitudes were what helped cement our sense of being a denim-clad David up against the agro-industrial Goliaths. We would soon find out that our sense of healthy counter-culture was not appreciated by the powers that be. They would have to get used to constructive criticism— and find a sense of humour.

As all three of us had worked for various large wineries directly or indirectly during the initial boom of Chilean wine, we had come to view the industry (their word not our’s) as makers of great values, a consumer product, often made to spec for a foreign supermarket, rather than wines with a sense of origin or with any sense of volition. Others were spending fortunes building architectural wonders for trophy wineries, but these were simply too big to reflect anything personal. We saw an opportunity for one ship at least to sail in another direction.

Independence  Lots #8-16

When our first child was born Pilar was offered a job in a perfume & flavourings company heading up a new division of ready-made cocktails. It was great news to work part-time and make decent money, but wine is not an easy business to break back into on the other side of babies. As I saw it, the wines we would make in the meantime were her curriculum to break back into the trade. At least that was my justification to take the Garage to the next level. So we applied more ‘ñeque’ en buen chileno.

As Garage Wine Co. wines found their way onto the menu of a half a dozen restaurants notably Portillo ski resort, we began to have contact with other small projects. In our minds, the emergence of other Davids, was a healthy notion that one-day others would come to realise as well.

Some were accomplished winemakers from the industry who had become independents and others were outliers: a lawyer, a photographer, an ex-pat miner and a Count from Tuscany… …in short we liked their wines; they were different. We liked the fact that others faced the same challenges and we began in earnest to scheme together as a group.

Later CORFO would claim that we the small instigated associatividad (a kind of working togetherness) in the wine sector, but writ large we were just being practical. And so it was that in June of 2009 with eleven other small independent producers (the winemakers, the lawyer et. al.) and we came together to form the Movement of Independent Vintners or MOVI. If you say it out loud to yourself in Spanish: El Movimiento de Viñateros Independientes, it sounds almost Monty Python. MoVI forever changed the wine trade in Chile. There have been various other groups formed since such as Vigno — Vignadores de Carignan and Chanchos Deslenguados, but it was MoVI that helped pave the way for others changing export legislation to make it easier for small cellars, fighting to get lesser-known varietals recognised by the SAG and a host of other things. Today MoVI has grown to more than 30+ small wineries from all over Chile and Garage have turned to focus our work principally on the old vines of the Secano Interior.

The earth moved under our feet – Lots 27 +

the Pachamama Vineyard

Having a wine scientist from the University meant Garage began experimenting from its earliest days. First within the well-known and well-heeled Maipo Valley where we sourced fruit higher end higher up into the Andes to get to the fresher Mountain Grown fruit of San Juan de Pirque. Then we began making a small lot of  

Cabernet Franc, initially for a Cab blend, but later we decided to make a second wine. We make both of these wines to this day, but back then we had the feeling that we would never really have control over the fruit. So we decided to go further from the mainstream towards finding a diamond in the rough as it were towards achieving the autonomy we wanted. And so it was that we were invited to see a special farm of a well-known grower in the Maule.

                                            Harvesting

After seeing dozens of acres of well-groomed fruit we were shown a small section of specific rows that were available if we were interested. The broker spoke at length about the other well-heeled buyers who purchased fruit from the property— we just wondered about what control we might have over the growing. What would it be like to be like to be the smallest customer of a large grower? All we had to do was send a truck with bins on the assigned day and we would receive the kilos we had agreed, but we would not have means to intervene if we wanted to do so. We declined and in a watershed moment that we did not realise was a watershed at all, we decided to look for some smaller growers and keep experimenting like we had always done. Two roads diverged in the vineyard that day— and we took the one less travelled, and yes, it has made all the difference.

What one needs to understand is that Carignan was in many vineyards in the Maule (600 + hectares are recognised today) but it was very difficult to find. Small vignerons do not know it as Carignan. They have no papers for it and they take of it as if it were Pais.

Most of the Carignan (but not all) was planted after a large earthquake in 1939 in Chillan. It was brought as part of an agricultural development programme. It was thought that the Carignan would lend colour, acidity and tannin to make a sturdier country wine in the region. It was usually planted as an extension to an existing Pais vineyard. Whereas the Pais vineyard would be a series of rows as straight as church pews, the Carignan planted much later would follow the relief of the slope — the latest [agricultural] technology at the time.

in the Bagual Vineyard in Caliboro

We set out to look for Carignan talking to vignerons tasting on the roadside and soon a pattern emerged. Some of the vignerons had a fudre of wine for which they wanted to charge an extra luca– 1ooo pesos. They would explain that this wine had a second Winter ie an extra year of storage— this was because it had the more acidic, more tannic Carignan that needed more time than the Pais. It took an extra year to come around and be approachable so it was the special occasion wine. We would ask to see the vineyard and after confidences were achieved we began sourcing fruit from different small parcels. Wanting to experiment, we made each one separately and this was the beginning of our Maule vineyard based wines each made from a separate parcel in a different place and soil. Eventually, we would travel further and find Carignan in Sauzal, Truquilemu, Caliboro and as far South as Portezuelo.  

Just before harvest in 2010 an earthquake of almost biblical proportions struck in the Maule. We had been working with two properties beforehand, but this would mark a change in how we worked going forward. We saw the Carignan on these small farms as a means for people to bootstrap and come back from the tragedy. We proposed a plan and won the Geoffrey Roberts award. We used the bursary money and subsequent funding from our UK importer: Bibendum to work with these small growers toward making serious wine from each parcel. We grafted Garnacha and Mataro on old Pais roots next to the existing Carignan and we made wines from these field-blends.

At work in the vineyards lately…

#gwcoharvest2022

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Apr 18

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Getting close to the end of the cutting #gwcotruquilemuvineyard #gwcoharvest2022

Getting close to the end of the cutting #gwcotruquilemuvineyard #gwcoharvest2022 ...

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Mar 8

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A white today to switch things up #gwcoharvest2022 #gwcosemillon #gwcoisidorevineyard #gwcofieldcraft #mauleadicto #mauleprofundo #maulevalley #maule #drinkchile #pinchyourselfharvest

A white today to switch things up #gwcoharvest2022 #gwcosemillon #gwcoisidorevineyard #gwcofieldcraft #mauleadicto #mauleprofundo #maulevalley #maule #drinkchile #pinchyourselfharvest ...

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Apr 8

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Thibault has been helping bring in the fruit and deserves more than a brief mention / Thibault ha estado canasteando en estos dias y merece aparecer entre los canasteros. #gwcoharvest2022

Thibault has been helping bring in the fruit and deserves more than a brief mention / Thibault ha estado canasteando en estos dias y merece aparecer entre los canasteros. #gwcoharvest2022 ...

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Apr 15

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Painting still life Cab Sauv #gwcoharvest2022 #gwcoregenerative
#gwcorevival

Painting still life Cab Sauv #gwcoharvest2022 #gwcoregenerative
#gwcorevival
...

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Mar 3

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Special welcome to my cousin Viny doing a stage with Bagual this harvest. #gwcobagualgarnacha #gwcobagualvineyard #mauleadicto #mauleprofundo #gwcoharvest2022

Special welcome to my cousin Viny doing a stage with Bagual this harvest. #gwcobagualgarnacha #gwcobagualvineyard #mauleadicto #mauleprofundo #gwcoharvest2022 ...

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Apr 21

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Punching down is an important part of our cellar work. Less extraction than years ago but here and there one does have to get physical . . . El pisoneo sigue siendo importante en bódega. Mucho menos extractiva que en el pasado pero hay días cuando uno tiene que ser bien físico . . . 

#letsgetphysical #olivianewtonjohnforever 
#gwcoharvest2022 #gwcowinery

Punching down is an important part of our cellar work. Less extraction than years ago but here and there one does have to get physical . . . El pisoneo sigue siendo importante en bódega. Mucho menos extractiva que en el pasado pero hay días cuando uno tiene que ser bien físico . . .

#letsgetphysical #olivianewtonjohnforever
#gwcoharvest2022 #gwcowinery
...

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Feb 25

Open
Buena onda hacer una vuelta con @marcelogarciadeandraca y @pvegamad a ver secano en la lluvia (el Malbec se ve boni) #gwcorenacidovineyard #mauleprofundo @terranoblewines #drinkchile #chileanwinebigandsmall #winebigandsmall #chilebigandsmall #gwcoharvest2022 #cauquenes #cauqueneschile

Buena onda hacer una vuelta con @marcelogarciadeandraca y @pvegamad a ver secano en la lluvia (el Malbec se ve boni) #gwcorenacidovineyard #mauleprofundo @terranoblewines #drinkchile #chileanwinebigandsmall #winebigandsmall #chilebigandsmall #gwcoharvest2022 #cauquenes #cauqueneschile ...

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Apr 25

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Makes we want to JUMP ( Old Vine Pale Rosé 2022 ) 
#gwcoharvest2022 #garagewinecompany #garagewineco

Makes we want to JUMP ( Old Vine Pale Rosé 2022 )
#gwcoharvest2022 #garagewinecompany #garagewineco
...

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Apr 20

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Last day cutting #gwcosauzalvineyard #gwcoharvest2022 #mauleadicto

Last day cutting #gwcosauzalvineyard #gwcoharvest2022 #mauleadicto ...

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Mar 24

Open
I love the box shots 

#gwcoharvest2022 #gwconegramole #gwcosanfrancisco 
#mauleadicto #maulevalley # maule #drinkchile #oldvinerevival

I love the box shots

#gwcoharvest2022 #gwconegramole #gwcosanfrancisco
#mauleadicto #maulevalley # maule #drinkchile #oldvinerevival
...

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Apr 19

Open
Cabernet Sauvignon 12 Alc 14 de abril 🍇 

#gwcoharvest2022 #garagewineco #singleferments #vino #vinoschilenos #chile #vinosmaule #wine #vin #instawine  #gwcosingleferments #oldvinerevival #oldvines #winevin

Cabernet Sauvignon 12 Alc 14 de abril 🍇

#gwcoharvest2022 #garagewineco #singleferments #vino #vinoschilenos #chile #vinosmaule #wine #vin #instawine #gwcosingleferments #oldvinerevival #oldvines #winevin
...

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Mar 9

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Women’s day should be everyday not once a year. #gwcoisidorevineyard 1st pick #gwcoharvest2022

Women’s day should be everyday not once a year. #gwcoisidorevineyard 1st pick #gwcoharvest2022 ...

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Apr 19

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Cheers Harvest 2022 / Liz Taylor Coshecha 2022 - we finish with Pais from Don Nivaldo in Sauzal #mauleadicto #gwcosauzalvineyard #drinkchile #winesofchile @singleferments #gwcoharvest2022

Cheers Harvest 2022 / Liz Taylor Coshecha 2022 - we finish with Pais from Don Nivaldo in Sauzal #mauleadicto #gwcosauzalvineyard #drinkchile #winesofchile @singleferments #gwcoharvest2022 ...

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Mar 2

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Syrah starts in slow #gwcoharvest2022

Syrah starts in slow #gwcoharvest2022 ...

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Apr 19

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Última gamela abordo #gwcoharvest2022

Última gamela abordo #gwcoharvest2022 ...

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Mar 3

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Monchito en todo su gloria / Mr Monchito canastero extraordinaire #gwcobagualvineyard #gwcoharvest2022 #mauleadicto

Monchito en todo su gloria / Mr Monchito canastero extraordinaire #gwcobagualvineyard #gwcoharvest2022 #mauleadicto ...

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Mar 7

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Crossing the Loncomilla to save a few kilometres (like miles but slimmer and more European) #gwcoharvest2022 #maule #mauleadicto #maulevalley

Crossing the Loncomilla to save a few kilometres (like miles but slimmer and more European) #gwcoharvest2022 #maule #mauleadicto #maulevalley ...

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Apr 15

Open
#gwcoharvest2022 Puico Alto

#gwcoharvest2022 Puico Alto ...

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Mar 24

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Don Hugo de vuelta con el equipo hoy welcome back Don Hugo today back in action with the GWCo posse picking — name the grape ? #gwcoharvest2022

Don Hugo de vuelta con el equipo hoy welcome back Don Hugo today back in action with the GWCo posse picking — name the grape ? #gwcoharvest2022 ...

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Apr 24

Open
Pisoneos finales / final punch downs #gwcoharvest2022

Pisoneos finales / final punch downs #gwcoharvest2022 ...

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  • Regenerative farming

Garage Wine Co
Winery: Camino San Antonio Caliboro KM 5.8 San Javier 3660000
Región del Maule, Chile

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  • Caliboro

About Garage Wine Co.

Garage Wine began quite literally in Pilar and Derek’s Garage. After half a dozen vintages making wine for an informal market of family and friends, it began exporting to UK & Denmark in 2006

The Parcels

GWCo 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: Bagual, Caliboro, Coelemu, Guarilihue, Loncomilla, Portezuelo, Puico, Ranquil, Sauzal, Truquilemu…

Over the years working in the community we have raised a veritable posse of vineyard hands whose skills are working the vineyards the old way / the traditional way— originario. We cultivate vineyards with small vigneron partners who work with horse and plough as his family has done for generations. Some of the parcels, where the next generation moved to the city, we have opted to rent long-term creating more work for the local hands who do want to stay on the farm.

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The vineyards are on the old Coastal Range of mountains closer to the Pacific — Chile’s other mountains. These are older and cooled more slowly so they have granitic soils, many with intrusions and cracks for roots to get deep down into. When GWCo. speaks of the provenance of our wines however we mean more than just the geology of the terroir. This is a good start, but we are convinced the farming practices that have evolved over generations have as much to do with the wines’ personalities as the soils. The regeneration of the vineyards long since neglected depends upon this farming.

GWCo. also makes an old-vine Cab Franc (old bush head vines) and a Cab Sauv blend in the Maule as well as two Cabs mountain-grown in the Maipo where the firm began in 2003.

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,ooo kilos at a time.

Single Ferment Series Wines

Pais & Cinsault in the Secano Interior, the cradle of the original Chilean viticulture, have been forever the victim of commodity pricing. When GWCo saw its Carignan growers being paid paltry sums for their other fruit we began acquiring small bits from various farmers to experiment. From the beginning, we paid bonafide prices that would allow for the traditional field works to cultivate the soil properly to continue into the future. Commercial bottlings of “Single Ferments” began with serendipity when we simply could not resist not one but three small bits of Cinsault. And then promptly plain ran out of tanks to ferment them in. With nowhere to put all three, we simply stacked the second bit of newly harvested fruit on top of the first already fermenting—and then the third on top of both, creating one single fermentation from the fruit of three farms. We adopted the same technique with Pais and subsequently named both wines: Single Ferment Series.

The Nitty Gritty

In these times it is important to stand for what you believe in, and more importantly to build the kind of business you believe in. At Garage Wine Co. we revive old vineyards in marginalized Chilean communities to make coveted wines. We’ve positioned these wines in a dozen established fine wine markets around the world and we grow. The wines are not made to be expensive per se, but they are found on the higher shelves– they need to command a price that allows for proper farming. What we have discovered is that the long-term practices of regenerative farming not only make for better fruit and thus more flavourful wine, but that such a business can become a force for financial, community and environmental good.

The Baby and the Bathwater  

As South American wine exports have boomed over the last quarter-century, it has grown increasingly difficult for small farmers to sell their old-vine grapes at a proper price – a price that can consistently sustain family and community. Mainstream buyers want more for less and they would have the growers modernise. The modern wine business calls for spraying instead of cultivating, scaling instead of focusing, and above all: reducing the cost of labour. But with the old vineyards, the labour is precisely where one finds the wisdom of farming passed down through the ages. Throwing that away would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Regenerative Farming

Farming in the Secano Interior, the Maule and Itata valleys of Southern Chile, has been a way of life since Colonial times. Not just vineyards, but mixed farming of heritage seed wheat, free-range livestock and local market produce. Small-scale farms use dry-farming methods: turning over the earth to capture scarce seasonal rainwater, and nutrients from the clever use of seasonal cover crops that in turn help sequester carbon from the air, and the use of horses to get into rows where tractors can’t reach.

This is where GWCo. works; too far from the comfort zone of those in the mainstream. These vineyards were neglected and relegated to bulk wine for decades because the booming market wanted branded varietals that didn’t command a price to support the work.

For more than a decade GWCo. has worked these old vines, there has been a marked improvement both in vineyard health and quality of the fruit produced.

The marrying of the fieldcraft of these small-scale farmers with the lens of modern science and GWCo’s mindful winemaking took a decade, but the marriage has proven successful not just for GWCo, but also for the farmers, our suppliers and customers alike. Over the past few years, we have begun to rent and in some cases acquire the property underneath the old vines. Today one-third of our production is worked our way with our own people.

Necessity was the mother of sustainability

Sustainability for us was never about seals and certifications. We became sustainable just trying to survive being small in an industry geared to the big. Vintage after vintage we made our way through a series of necessary work-arounds, finding a way forward, that only later would be seen to be sustainable.

Recycled bottles – Because our production runs were small we were challenged when it came to dry-goods. When bottle makers refused to deliver to us, we found a local bottle recycler who became a trusted partner. This small business employs workers in a rural part of the country where stable and safe work is hard to find. What we learned is that when bottles are manufactured they have a limited shelf-life on the factory patio—a best before date if you will. Today we buy these bottles and wash them before use. This is glass that would otherwise have been smashed and melted and remade—without ever having been used. What is the carbon footprint of a bottle manufactured twice to be used once?

Labels & Packaging— We learned to paint / silk-screen bottles because our bottlings were so small that the label printers did not want to work with us. The industry was geared to long print runs and said there was no money in printing 1200 labels. So we built a custom machine and found experienced hands with silk-screening. Luis, our bottle painter, has been painting bottles for us for 11 years now. (Chile’s first hotel built entirely of recycled materials: The WineBox, has adapted out bottles for their lamps today.)

What’s with the wax? - Regular capsules were also sold with a minimum far larger than our needs, so we found a school supply firm that would make us food-safe wax for seals from crayon wax.

All of these workarounds-- bothers slash hassles at the time, led to a positive and durable differentiation in packaging. We have continued to work with earth-friendly inks for silk screening and recycled materials for cases.

Fermentation tanks: Unable to buy new tanks— designed to make mainstream wines, large, expensive and inflexible in their design, we took the leftover cuttings and scraps of a large stainless manufacturer and pieced together Lagars (traditional word for open tanks). We did it for far less money and the upcycling created opportunities for local welding shops.

Fruit: Years ago we bought from mainstream growers. When we made a crackerjack wine, the grower would use the prestige with critics to sell our fruit to someone bigger / better known leaving us without said fruit and without continuity in our portfolio. After two or three experiences such as this, frustrated, we went South to the Secano to work with growers unknown, unpolished, and disconnected from the mainstream. Working closely with small growers far from the beaten path, we found diamonds in the rough. When the polishing was done we had forged a bond with the growers—partnerships that we have continued to build upon with others in the neighbourhood.

Diverse leadership

Let’s face it, the wine business can be conservative, clubby and patriarchic. Having a female lead our work helps us work with our growers and suppliers on a different footing. We also like to mix scientists with field hands. Instead of contracting the cheapest bused-in labour, we keep it local where there are more experienced hands. Mercenary piecework doesn’t work — proper sourcing does. It’s a mouthful, but in a phrase: the difference created by the discretionary effort released when you work in good faith with local farmhands is so much more than the savings that might be achieved from cost-cutting, that there’s no comparing the two. We have never looked back.

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Email: info@garagewineco.cl

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