The Harvest.
Harvesting is done by hand, selecting each bunch at that moment. We discard the dehydrated bunches and those pecked by birds and foxes. There is where the first quality selection begins.
In addition, the same process has been done before with the green bunches. However, to reduce the production to a few pounds per acres.
A few pounds are synonymous of strength, the concentration of flavor, and the final quality of the wine.
The transport to the winery is in “Gamelas” which are small boxes that avoid mistreatment in this short trip of a few hundred meters from the vineyard to the winery. All important details in the pursuit of quality.
Production and Storage.
Depending on the variety, the grapes are stored for 24 hours in our cold room which ensures that they enter “strong” for the next de-stemming process.
Our state-of-the-art Swiss machinery removes the branches from the cluster and immediately into the fermentation vats which as the grapes come in cold this slows down the process. A slow fermentation is also a synonym for quality, like so many processes in nature.
Once the musts are fermented, aging in different stages in our dark and cool cellar is fundamental.
We store for a minimum of one year in French oak or American oak barrels. Also, we are experimenting with a Southern Chilean oak, the Lenga. Additionally, depending on the variety we can store in stainless steel, Spanish clay amphorae, and French cement eggs.
Furthermore, after blending with our Chilean and foreign winemakers, we have another period of aging and resting of our already bottled wines.
Historic wines.
Thus, we have formed a collection of 10 years of our previous and experimental wines which we call “historic”. After 10 years of getting to know our vineyard, its vines, its vintages, its irrigation, its soils, and its orientations, we felt it was time to launch our 2019 and 2020 wines to the market.
These historic wines mostly of excellent quality are only on sale in our winery for our visitors.