Works - Garage Wine Co 3.0

Old-vine Revival

Contrary to what many wine labels champion, most old vineyards are neglected and for three simple reasons.

- too far from a paved road
- too small to fill a truck
- too narrow [between the rows] for a tractor to work

Gorgeous fruit, from age-old vines, simply passed over for not being efficient enough!

Have you ever tasted efficiency?

To learn more about one way Garage is helping to get more old vineyard fruit into a bottle in a shop near you

Watch:

Old-vine Revival video (4 minutes video)

Recent Editorial

Read more + March 5, 2023 By Derek Mossman Knapp in Editorial, Press / Prensa
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Reading Between the Points

Give País a Chance

The original wine grape taken to the Americas was Listan Prieto or País as we came to call it in Chile
It came as raisins aboard Spanish Galleons from the Canary Islands and it was
planted as part of early homesteading on farms near the Southern frontier
Documented as early as 1548 this wine for Catholic mass, was soon enjoyed recreationally.
A new world wine dating back to the 15oo´s— doesn´t sound so new?

País Clip (3 mins)

The Ploughmen

In 2010 Maule suffered one of the most devastating earthquakes ever recorded 9,1 Richter (2 mins 51 secs)
Garage saw an opportunity amidst the devastation and proposed to help some of the small producers in Sauzal to get back on their feet by focusing on old-vine Cariñena for export. After winning the Geoffrey Roberts Award see link to get started, GWCo sold futures en primeur to finance the grafting of Garnacha and Monastrell (grafted on roots of País) next to the original Cariñena to make field-blends. Ploughmen has inspired many in the region and helped raise the value of old-vine fruit.

See Sauzal Vynrd Clip (4 mins)

How we work
We don´t believe the business of sustainability is certification. We´re rethinking old vines and regenerative methods to unlock both flavour and a viable economic future for the farmers. It´s just better business long-term — learn.

LEARN MORE...

KNOW MORE ABOUT HOW YOUR WINES ARE MADE
We´ve taken the byzantine out and left the mojo in. Take a few minutes and get the skinny, on how we make the wines from small batch ing to single barrel racking, from stems to skins to pressings . . . its back to our beginnings to understand why we ferment and age the wines like we do.

LEARN MORE...

Friends, Influences & Obsessions
Here are some of our neighbours, colleagues in Swartland, California, Zaragoza and New Zealand . . . who make this crazy wine world rounder.

LEARN MORE...

MOVI
El Movimiento de Viñateros Independientes / The Movement of Independent Vintners

Founded in 2010, MoVI was the 1st advocate for small producers in South America

Working collectively MoVI challenged and complemented the wine establishment creating a new space that extended the mosaic of Chilean wine.

A positive counter-culture to contrast the mainstream— artisans without a need for ‘scalability’.

As a result, the small wine category is healthy and expanding in South America

Garage Wine Co was a co-founder and an active partner in MoVI

VIGNO - Vignadores de Carignan
Old-vine Carignan producers group founded in the Maule in 2012

A kind of D.O.C. formed voluntarily, where producers agree to work to a common standard that includes:

Old bush-head trained vines
Dry-farmed without irrigation

Minimum 85% Carignan

Minimum two years to release

Vineyards within a designated area of the Maule Valley

Garage Wine Co was a co-founder and an active partner in VIGNO

Almaulé

Almaule is the collaborative effort of six wineries in the Maule to create value for the oldest variety in Chile: País and it’s growers. A tribute to the cultural richness, the history of traditional dry farming (no irrigation) and the resilience of the traditional wine trade.

Goals:
— put País on the table (where there is too much CocaCola and Cabernet!)
— revive its identity and heritage.
— drive demand and better pricing for growers.
Short clip 2 mins

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

Open in Google Maps

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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T: +56 9 9750 0379
Email: info@garagewineco.cl

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Old-vine Revival

Recent Editorial

Give País a Chance

The Ploughmen

How we work

KNOW MORE ABOUT HOW YOUR WINES ARE MADE

Friends, Influences & Obsessions

MOVI

VIGNO - Vignadores de Carignan

Almaulé