Garage
Garage makes wines from a series of individual parcels, small lots that include a series of dry-farmed field-blends of Cariñena, Garnacha, Monastrell, País, Cinsault and Cab Franc grown 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, Portezuelo, Puico, Sauzal, Truquilemu… They also make the Single Ferment Series wines from País and Cinsault. These are ‘village’ wines from 2-3 different vignerons’ vineyards.
Over the years working in the community Garage has raised a veritable posse of vineyard hands whose skills are working the vineyards the old way.
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 decomposed granitic soils, many with intrusions and cracks for roots to get deep down into. When GWCo. speaks of the provenance of their wines however they mean more than just the geology of the terroir. They 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.
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.
Philosophy
When they began there was no small wine in the Chilean trade. It was easy to understand why because suppliers would not sell so little fruit, would not deliver so few bottles, were not interested in printing so few labels. They learned to work-around these challenges.
They made tanks from up-cycled scraps of stainless steel. They adopted recycled bottles. They learned to silkscreen bottles. They adapted crayon wax for capsules. And perhaps more importantly they went South to the Secano where there were smaller farms / smaller egos and … old vines
It was old fashioned pluck —precisely the pluck they saw in the people in the community of the secano applied to their farming.
Pilar said that “Necessity was the mother of our sustainability”
It is an important distinction for Garage. Sustainability does not come from on high, in good times when there are budgets to be dedicated to seals and certifications . Rather, it is something that comes up from the bottom applied and refined in the everyday.
Biography
Just imagine such old vineyards passed down over all these years suffering from neglect. Not because they stopped making wonderful wine, but because the vineyards no longer connected with the modern world. Too small to fill a truck, too far away from a paved road. Cannot be worked with a tractor nor can they be picked by a machine.
For years we have worked in the Secano Interior with small farmers ploughing the vines & cultivating the land. These vignerons have dry-farmed the Secano for centuries, and not just their vineyards, but mixed farms of heritage seed wheat, free range livestock, and local market gardening.
The mainstream wine business wants more for less each growing season and they want the small growers to modernise: spray instead of cultivate, scale-up instead of focus, and above all: reduce the costs of labour. But the /labour/ is precisely where you find the wisdom of farming passed down those generations, and that wisdom, is what unlocks the flavour.
What we have discovered is that proper farming holds many secrets, not just to growing tastier fruit [ to make tastier wine ] , but giving proper local work also answers to a healthier community healthier soils— ultimately a healthier planet.
Wines from Garage
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