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Derek Mossman Knapp
Derek Mossman Knapp
Monday, 29 November 2021 / Published in Editorial, Works

Reading Between the Points

Years ago after a long evening of wine and wine chatter, a friend, who wasnt in the wine business, shared with me a theory about how to buy wine using points. To his thinking, from what he overheard, if there was so much hullabaloo about the latest 90+ point wine, clearly the best buys must be the 89 pointers. He reasoned they must be better priced, pack more bang for the buck, and be less likely to be “taken by someone else to the same dinner party”.

He theorized that there must be a whole bunch of these ‘sleepers’— he called them, good wines that didn’t show well the day of their dance recital what with so many other bottles all in line trying to kick a little higher than the bottle next to them. I could not help but to agree with his thinking and was intrigued by the idea of an alternative reading in wine criticism ie that which was not the writer’s intent. [Full disclosure: in my life before wine I wrote a master’s thesis on irony, so parallel communication of the unwritten does strike a chord with me.]

Fast forward to today…

Again after an evening of much wine and wine chatter I thought back to my friend, but two things are different. One: due to a more specialised wine trade crowd– and some might argue wine-point inflation, 90 points is no longer enough. Two: the chatter this time was on WhatsApp due to lockdown. Interestingly, this time the chatting revolved around wines that a certain critic insisted only achieved greatness at 95 points and up.

Applying my friend’s his logic today, the sleepers, and thus the “smart buy”, would be 94 pointers. With so much of chat dedicated to their greatnesses at 95 plus my friends theory would seem to be as true as ever. And thus, wouldn’t it be a terrific tasting indeed to line up the 94’s I got to thinking. Within these ranks there must be wines that just didn’t kick high enough, or as I shall explain: kick fast enough, when their turn came.

Garage has particpated in many tastings, and helped organise many more such tastings in the neighbourhood in Maule and or for MoVI and these are a few things I have gleaned. 

The number of wines tasted in a any session is very often inversely proportional to the time allowed each. And here I share something I have learned about the mere 94’s of the world: many, if not most, have a way of starting late. (Something I personally identify with as a late bloomer). I would go even further and say that some of the best ones are in point of fact these one’s that are slower out of the starting blocks. They can have something special, but only for those who take a little longer. These are the wines for enjoying at table. Afterall, who’s in a hurry in these times?

When my friend reads this he is going to raise the question: how much more do these wines cost than his 89 pt sleepers of yesteryear?  I would answer that these wines pack a whole lot more than that ‘first kick’. To be sure they have an initial impression, but they also have a few minutes in the glass personality, and then, if one is patient, a more evolved and complex more time required reward complexity for the patient and studiously hedonist / hedonistly studious— if only we take the time. (Pilar would say some have a best the next day on the counter grace too!)

Don’t these slouchy 94’s start to sound like the perfect wines for these times? And mightn’t this alternative reading, a kind of reading between the points be just the remedy for these last weeks of quarantine?  

What does near greatness cost?

These wines are going to set you back a little more–  more than a $20 but hopefuly less than two, but what did you expect? They will come packing a lot more. They have been crafted not fabricated more personally on a more human scale. I would ask my friend stuck in the past: why are we so stingy with wine? It‘s nourishment you know and not just for the body but also for the soul. And what did the organic beef set you back anyway?

It is important in these times to take stock of the importance and power of where we make our purchases: food, wine and much more. We must think about the importance of the small, of the independent, of the family run. Such independent, lets call them indie firms have knowledge and experience, and they can steer you to things delicious and flavourful outside your comfort zone. And, if you are online, in these times, why not try some 94’s or an alternative reading of your own, whilst we wait for all of this to turn the corner.

Be well / stay safe.

Djmk

Here is a very partial list of establishments that are purveying some great things that I know of [and am envious of those of you who can take advantage of] in the mentioned fair cities far away.

Archive – Toronto (terrific well curated selection)

Red Lion and Sun – London (See short videos on Insta and you will soon get the idea)

Garagiste – USA (a stalwart source for many a year)

La Cava del Sommelier – Santiago, Chile (consulta pregunta aquí hay ideas and patience)

@catodochile wine pusher extraordinaire

Vinos Natural (great things not easy to find in Chile including Argentine wines)

If you know of links that should ney need be included here send them on!

And finally, if in Chile, and if you have not managed to pinch a link already here is a link to a case of your’s truly’s own mere 94’s.

Finalmente, si está en Chile, y si no ha logrado clickear un enlace ya, aquí hay un enlace a una caja de 6 x 94.

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

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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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