António Maçanita: Electric Wines from the Edge

Energy in wine is intangible, but immediately recognisable. Does it come from the acidity, a bracing, mouth-puckering sharpness that makes a wine feel alive and pulsating with energy? Is it salinity, that salty, sea-spray taste that gives it a sense of liveliness? Some wines just sparkle and demand another sip. When it comes to António Maçanita, however, there’s as much energy in the winemaker as there is in the glass – no mean feat when you taste his electric new Porto Santo project.

António was interested in the natural world from a young age, he loved body-boarding and fishing on family trips to the Azores. He decided to study agriculture at university, enrolling at the University of Algarve; but made a mistake mistake on the course enrolment code, which turned his desired Agronomy into Agricultural and Industrial Engineering. However, this proved to be a happy accident, as the course offered a third-year viticulture module.

Under the tutelage of Rogério de Castro, one of Portugal’s leading viticulturists, he fell in love with the world of wine, and raced into action, planting his own vineyard in the Azores with friends, and heading around the world to get first-hand experience. Stints in California with Charles Thomas, former winemaker at Opus One and Mondavi; McClaren Vale, with Chester Osborn at d’Arenberg; and in Bordeaux at Château Lynch-Bages all followed. Since returning to Portugal Antonio has set up winemaking projects across the country, in the Azores, Douro and beyond; but it was his latest in Porto Santo that intrigued us.

Discovering a new territory

“I only reached Porto Santo in 2020. [During lock-down] a good friend of mine, Nuno Faria (owner of Michelin star 100Maneiras in Lisbon) was on the island of Madeira. We all had a lot of time on our hands, and we were talking about the future, like we all were back then. He showed me the vineyards in Porto Santo and I started to get excited”.

Porto Santo is a tiny island, 43 kilometres north-east of Madeira, with a population of just over 5,000 people. Despite the Atlantic location, it’s the driest place in the whole of Portugal and the climate is semi-arid. While Madeira averages 2,700mm of rain per year, Porto Santo receives less than 400mm.

“It’s tiny and almost in the middle of nowhere- it’s like nowhere I’ve been before,” he said.

So what was it that drew him to this seemingly remote island with a climate most vignerons would run a mile from?

“I started researching the grapes, in the beginning I assumed they were all hybrids, planted post-phylloxera. There was a grape called Cunningham which came from America and was used to make Madeira. And then Nuro said they’re Caracol, and I looked it up: Vitis Vinifera, that had been abandoned and was nearly extinct.

“Then he said Listrão, and I said ‘no, no, no! Don’t tell me it’s Listrão like Listán Blanco? That’s when I started to get really excited. As soon as I could get a flight I said: right, let’s go“!

Porto Santo: a unique environment

There are just 14 hectares of vines on the island, ten of which are Caracol and four of Listrão, called Listán Blanco in Tenerife or Palomino on mainland Spain. The majority of grapes on the island, António explained, are either sent to nearby Madeira to make their eponymous wines. It’s not an island that’s geared towards wine production.

Farming has to be hands-on and well planned. Irrigation is important: there are channels running across the island that guide water down onto the properties to drench them, so the soil can take in as much water as possible. António points to the sponge-like, high pH limestone soils as a key factor here, in contrast to the more volcanic soils of the Canary islands, which have a low pH. The high winds which could batter the vines are dealt with in two different ways: by using protective canes that encircle the vines or with ‘muros de crochet’, a local method in which they train the vines along the ground with dry-stone walls built around them.

What’s in a name?

António began the project without a winery, on Porto Santo at least:

“When the project started we were using a tiny winery in Madeira, we had to ship the grapes over there. We started picking in the morning, put them in a refrigerated truck, on a boat, they would arrive at 1am in Madeira, and we’d start pressing.”

They’ve recently bought a small facility on Porto Santo, a true garage winery in that it was a former car repair shop! But for the first two vintages the wines were produced in Madeira, meaning they had to negotiate both islands complex bottling laws. As they labelled them as Madeira, they had to pass a strict, old-fashioned test from a tasting committee:

“As you can imagine, none of our wines passed the tasting commission of Madeira. They ‘lacked the Madeira character’, so I convinced the head of the chamber to do a tasting with the team, something they had never done before. I bought some wines along from Envínate, Suertes del Marques and Jerez to show Listrão in different forms. I know this is not typical Madeira but nobody had tasted Listrão from Porto Santo before“.

They weren’t allowed to be labelled Porto Santo, so the wines read “P. Santo”, something that will change in future vintages with the introduction of their own winery.

The Wines

They makes four wines in total, two from Caracol, one from Listrão and a red made from Tinta Negra grapes grown on Madeira.

All the whites are whole-bunch pressing and fermented naturally in stainless steel tanks. Caracol dos Profetas spends 3 months on its lees, before bottling. It’s refreshing, with a blistering surge of freshly squeezed citrus and olive brine, tempered by a creamy texture and some salted almond notes:

“It’s almost like a base champagne with the aromatics. Citrus and biscuit with the mineral notes,  chalky and broken stone notes.”

Their top Caracol, the Caracol das Areia, comes from “Vineyards that look like they struggle more, with sandier soils, berries are smaller and the fruit felt very concentrated,” António says. It spends 10 months on lees in neutral oak. It has an amazing density in the mouth, weight and concentration combined with steely citrus, some tropical, crystalline notes and a light, almost saffron-like spice note on the finish: “There’re mineral flavours but there’s also a lot of freshness. There’s an iodine sensation, there’s more texture here, more to chew on.”

The Listrão dos Profetas comes from 80 year-old vines and is made the same way as the Caracol das Areia. Despite some similarities with the Canarian interpretations, it feels quite distinct, there’s no smoky reduction, but an avalanche of zippy, fresh citrus fruit, lemon, lime and grapefruit all combining with green olives and a floral streak.

“It’s a wine I’m really proud of. It tastes like rocks breaking against it each other, it has a lot of texture. Compared to the Caracol it’s crunchier. There’s less warmth or spice, more freshness and sharpness”.

His only red is made from Tinta Negra, a light-skinned variety that is generally used in the fortified wines of the island. Made with 30% whole-bunches, it’s a crunchy, juicy, brimming with cranberry and raspberry flavours and a distinctive minerally graphite note.

António’s first releases are stunning, combining concentration with linear precision, they are wines that unfurl in the glass as you spend an evening with them. We can’t wait to see how the project develops as he learns more about the island and with the introduction of his new winery. Get in touch with your sales rep if you’d like to try these remarkable island wines.

Frenchtown Farms: working in harmony with nature.

We caught up with Cara and Aaron Monkrish of Frenchtown Farms, via Zoom from the remarkable vineyard that goes into their Pearl Thief white blend. They told us the unusual history of the project, and about their intuitive approach to viticulture and winemaking.

Cara: “The main thing that you need to know about us is that we’re farmers before anything else. That’s the most important part of what we do”.

Aaron joins her. “This is it, this is our team [i.e. him and Cara]. Plus a handful of people who come through and help us throughout the year. Our main focus is the vines”. He flips the camera so we can see the vineyard while they talk.

A unique site

There’s an unusual story behind the foundation of their vineyard, Aaron explained: “It’s owned by a religious/ spiritual organisation, a cult. The planted 150 hectares of vines in the 70s, it was the largest single owned vineyard in California, now it’s down to 16ha, and we farm 12ha”.

All of the vines are own rooted, whether they got phylloxera, or if the wines sold and they made money wasn’t important. They weren’t building a business, it was a spiritual exercise, they were just out here to dig holes!

We asked where the vine material came from:
Aaron: “It was a selection massale taken from an old vineyard called Callaway in southern California. A German winemaker Carl Berner fell in love with a woman who was in the cult, he moved up from California with a suitcase full of vine cuttings, and started the planting here. Many of these vines were planted by our mentors Gideon and Saron at Clos Saron, Gideon was the head winemaker at the property for 30 years. They have 30 years of personal knowledge of working in these vineyards, what slopes are good, what vine problems we’ll encounter, so we have this encyclopaedia of lived knowledge. We showed up on their doorstep after tasting one of their wines and said ‘You have to teach us’“!

There are pros and cons to ungrafted vines, as Aaron explained:
“Normally you’d have an American rootstock to protect the vines against phylloxera, for drought tolerance, or to control yields. They were just taking Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling or Cabernet cuttings, and sticking them in the ground. One of the cool things about that is that if we have vine or trunk diseases, we’re able to take small shoots coming from the ground, that would normally be rootstock shoots that you couldn’t use, but here it’s the same variety as the body of the vine, and because they’re on older rootstocks they can fruit quickly.

“We’ve been rehabilitating this old vineyard over the past eight years. As you walk down the rows you see the thick original vine trunks, next to what looks like a baby vine, which is actually growing from a 40-50 year old rootstock. Because the roots are deep we’ve got away with completely dry-farming the site since we took over in 2015. Plus the irrigation infrastructure’s been destroyed by our neighbourhood bears, so even if we wanted to irrigate it would be impossible”.

The harvest cycle

The vineyard where they grow the grapes for Pearl Thief covers most of a hillside, planted with Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. One of the key viticultural factors is that the rows curve around the slopes on terraces, with varying orientations, it looks like the Douro. This makes ripening along rows uneven. They start harvest early, normally the first week of August. The Sauvignon Blanc is the first thing to come in, they start picking from the lower east/south-east facing rows, and move up to the west facing rows.

Aaron: “Our harvest is bringing in tiny amounts of fruit each day for 45-50 days. With our limited labour, on a typical day we’ll harvest two-three rows – between 300-550kg of grapes – take them home, lightly stomp and then press them, eat dinner, go to sleep and repeat.

“So we’re slowly building the cuvee as we pick, as Cara said, walking up the hill and chasing the ripeness. In a way it’s good that we have so many varietals, they harvest at different times, so we’re just going from varietal to varietal over 5-6 weeks and hand selecting the perfect grapes”.

What’s behind the labels? A pragmatic approach to pest management.

Aaron: “We don’t worry too much about physiological ripeness or BRIX. The real decision making factor in when we choose to harvest has to do with watching the animals in the vineyard”. This is mirrored on the wine labels, the stag for Suba Rosa, the bees and thistle for Cecilia Rose, and the rabbit on Pearl Thief, these are all animals that inhabit the vineyards, sometimes eating the grapes. “In particular locations we’re watching for when the rabbits come out, they get up on their hind legs, reach up and pull the clusters towards them. This has the effect of stripping all the berries off the stem, it looks like the cartoon fish that the cat’s eaten, there’s white grapes all over the floor and a very guilty looking rabbit”!

“It turns out that everything loves sugar water. The rabbits determine when things are ripe, and rather than be mad at them or find ways to fight them, insects, or weeds that we don’t like, we try to find ways to have a sense of humour about it. We try to focus on growing and the joy of farming, rather than thinking of all these things as pests or annoyances”.

“It’s challenging at times not to be emotional about it: there’s a herd of water buffalo that live in the next pasture, there’s an Italian guy who milks them and makes beautiful mozzarella and it’s a joy all year long, but sometimes they get into our vineyard, poop in the rows and knock over fenceposts. We live in a wild place”!

The practical business of winemaking

Their second-hand Wilmes press can take two days worth of harvest to fill, so depending on the picking schedule Pearl Thief gets wholebunch direct pressed, or stomped and soaked on skins and stems overnight, in anticipation of having a full load to press the next day.

Aaron: We’re not particularly interested in making orange wines, there’s never maceration in the presence of ethanol in our cuvees. Water soluble phenolics [from a short overnight soak] are different structurally and flavour-wise to an orange wine.

“Pearl Thief is made like many white wines: aged in neutral French oak, on gross lees, topped regularly. But there are oxidative notes, which has a lot to do with how we handle the grapes as they come into the cellar, with foot-stomping, but also because of how we press. We expose all of the wines, both red and white, to a lot of oxygen during the pressing, which helps protect them in the long run and brings out Jura-esque oxidative flavours.

“The choice of Sauvignon and Semillon, and sometimes some Rousanne, for Pearl Thief is based on what’s planted here. Our interest is more in terroir than in varietal, if we had 10 different varietals, if I could also add Chenin, Viognier, Grenache Blanc, Macabeo… I would love to over time, because I think as you obscure the varietal influence, what comes up underneath is the actual hillside”.

A eureka moment about their soils

We asked about the geology of the hillside Pearl Thief is planted on.
Aaron: If you’d asked us that question a year and a half ago we would have said ‘we’re on decomposed granite’ along with everyone else in this area. One of our recent interns was a geology major, Sam took a look and said: Where’s all this granite you guys are talking about! It turns out geology students come from all over the world to study the Smartville Complex, a famous little pocket with all sorts of studies written about it.

“In this 40km stretch of North Yuba there was volcanic activity millions of years ago that melted the granite, a mixture of basalt and schist came up from underneath, and lots of quartz was formed. The granite cooled too quickly to reform underground, it exploded up onto the ground and because it was in contact with air it becomes something called rhyolite which almost feels like limestone, but it’s a much lighter colour and very soft, it’s easy to break with your hands almost like slate. Same with the schist and the particular type of basalt that we have, it’s very hard but brittle. I think that’s the reason we’re able to dry farm here, even though we’re basically on a big pile of rocks with a thin veneer of grass on top, the vine roots are able to find their way through these layers. But there aren’t many vineyards here so the two haven’t connected until now”.

The technical answer to your question would be igneous, intrusive, metamorphic rock.

“This answers some important questions for us. We’ve worked with purchased fruit in the past, from vineyards which are just an hour away, and they’re drastically different. Structurally the tannins, the acidity levels, everything. You could look at yields, or irrigation or exposure, vine age, but there’s something you can’t explain until you start to understand the soils we’re on.

“If you’re walking around in the vineyard you’ll notice you’re constantly stubbing your toes on big chunks of quartz. I know it’s a little woo woo but I do think there’s an energy in the vines that directly translates from being on these mountains full of vibrating quartz”.

Our enology background is learning on the job

Cara explained that Gideon, their mentor, had a very technical winemaking background and that over the course of the 30 years he experimented with many different winemaking practices for fruit from the farm. “He started super technical and pared it down to the most simple, but we’re going backwards. Starting with this really paired down, as simple as it gets method, we’ve added de-stemming, all the different quirks we do”.

Aaron: “Since we started we’ve done stages at other wineries to get other perspectives and to learn. It’s been challenging at times to learn from scratch, but it’s also been a freeing way to explore our terroir. We’ve had a lot of freedom to experiment, and change small things with each cuvee”.

Would they describe their methods as natural winemaking?
Aaron: “It’s incredibly simple winemaking. The three important decisions for us are: When you pick, when you press, and when you bottle. Those are timing decisions that determine a wine’s character, personality and nature. A lot or the rest of the decisions are just meaningless fluff, that’s what Gideon would say. Sometimes in young wines you’ll taste the hand of the winemaker, but over time, what really comes out is those three decisions. We are experimenting year by year, aiming for more finesse and elegance”.

There’s downsides to not being based in a winemaking culture or community like Napa or Sonoma, but there’s also some benefits to being out here in the wilderness with nobody looking over our shoulder.

Aaron: “We think about winemaking as a year long process. We think about building a cuvee as we’re pruning. How we’ll select shoots, how long they are, how many nodes we leave, whether we give one side or the other a year off, that’s all building the cuvee. We ask the vines questions, and try to read the energy levels and health of the sap flow. Similarly with shoot thinning, tying or tucking, hedging or any other action throughout the year when we’re paying attention to the vines, we’re building the nature and character of the wines”.

By the time harvest comes around it isn’t so much us making the wine as us celebrating the end of a long process. We don’t have the energy to put our ego or our stamp on anything at that point. We’re relieved we’ve brought the fruit in that we’ve worked hard on all year, and there’s no need or desire to manipulate it.

Learning from Burgundy and Jura

Pierre Overnoy’s grandson Batiste came to Frenchtown for a six week stage. He’s only 16 but grew up in Pierre’s vineyards and cellar, they were discussing de-stemming, with reference to Cara and Aaron’s red wine Cotillion, made from Grenache and Syrah, and the only wine they de-stem. Batiste showed Cara and Aaron a video of Pierre Overnoy de-stemming Poulsard, using a apparatus they had built themselves. It’s a board with a small holes drilled into it, that sits at a 30 degree angle, you push the grapes up and they tumble back down, it takes the berries off the stem without breaking the skin. They get around 450kg of grapes with about a bottle worth of juice.

Aaron: “We’re interested in paying around with intracellular fermentation. We started to learn about what Tomoko Kuriyama is doing in Chanterêves in Burgundy, where they do whole cluster or whole berry for a period of time, then they slowly start punching down. This is how Cotillion was made, the bin of unbroken berries sits for 2-5 days, after which instead of pumping over we’ll get in and do a small amount of stomping in the morning and the evening. Progressively over the course of 10 days we’ll stomp 5-10% of the fruit until everything is smashed. Intracellular fermentation starts, and just as it’s about to take on some of the carbonic characters that we aren’t in love with we crush all the fruit, and it goes into the ‘normal’ oxidative fermentation.

For Cotillion we’re not interested in carbonic maceration, which creates the same flavours no matter where you do it in the world, and obscures terroir really badly. Drinking carbonic can be fun but this isn’t the vineyard to be doing that.

“Cotillion is a place where we experiment with the process, we’ve always wanted to make something bit more elegant and smooth from these rustic vineyards, and pull out the elegance of our terroir each year. We haven’t totally figured it out, but we think the whole berry helps with that. This is our attempt to make less tannic, less structured, less grumpy wines”.

What next?

They bought their own property last year, when we spoke they had recently spent a couple of days putting in posts and trellising for a new vineyard block. According to Aaron this site is also abundant in quartz: “The whole hillside is just schist and quartz. It’s some of the most interesting terroir I’ve seen anywhere in the region. We’re going to plant Sauvignon, Semillon, Rousanne, Grenache Blanc, Marsanne and they’ll all go together into what will one day be the new Pearl Thief”. Inspired by visits to Jura they’re also planting Savagnin, a tiny plot of Mondeuse, and 1ha of Syrah which they’re planning to use for a sparkling project.

Cara and Aaron have accomplished a lot on their relatively short winemaking journey, but there’s more to come. Read more about the project and wines here. Or contact us if you’d like to try the wines.

Wightman & Sons: The Accidental Winemakers

Winemakers often fall into two camps: some inherit the title and are described as having “winemaking in their DNA”; others have an encounter or “epiphany” which sets them on the path to winemaking, or a sense of romance that “ties them to the land”.

No such talk when it comes to Andrew Wightman and his son Brandon. In fact, Andrew readily admits that in their case, it was far from love at first sight.

“My plan was to pull out all the vineyards. I wanted more room for my horses and I’d always wanted to raise cattle. But my neighbours, and the farmer I bought the land from, politely told me ‘no’.”

So Andrew was left with several old vineyards, at the foot of the Paaderberg mountains in Malmesbury, and a new calling thrust upon him.

“We had absolutely no knowledge of farming vineyards, no knowledge of making wine either. The only knowledge we had about wine was how to drink it!“

Previously Andrew had grown and sold organic vegetables to local farmers markets and raised livestock, so he knew about farming. With his son Brandon they quickly began to learn the ins and outs of winemaking, with the help of the local winegrowing community. Their neighbour, as it happened, was Craig Hawkins of Testalonga, not a bad person to have on hand to help.

“We started farming and just started to fall in love with the vineyards.”

Farming fascination

With Craig providing a listening ear, the Wightman family began to nurture the vineyards, using organic practices and learning how to make wine traditionally.

“When we bought the farm we didn’t start farming organically right away- we took over the methods of the previous owners, the amount of shit they were spraying, I never understood it at all! It took me a few years to understand what was happening.

“Since we’ve moved to organics, my bank statements have been decreasing – conventional sprays cost a lot more!”.

After five years on the farm, and with the vineyards moving towards practicing organic viticulture, they started reaping the rewards.

“Farming for me is what’s exciting. Since we’ve farmed organically the amount of activity in soil, the wildlife, earthworms, and insects is amazing”.

“The soil’s benefited from our work, you can see the change in the plants. Because of the drought, the roots are digging down, two to three metres, to find water. The plants just look amazing, they’re beautiful and green. You get out what you put in,”.

Andrew has five blocks of Chenin Blanc, the youngest planted 16 years ago and the oldest 56 years ago. They also have a small block of Clairette Blanche and some Pinotage and Mourvèdre, and in 2015 they planted some Macabeo. Soils are primarily decomposed granite and sand, with a thin layer of clay beneath. The younger blocks towards the bottom of the hill have stonier, shale-based soils that are less fractured.

Fruits of their labour

We work with three of their wines, beginning with A&Bs Blend, which Andrew describes as their “everyday wine”.

The idea for this came, like so many great ideas do, over a few beers and a braai out on the farm when they were starting out. Andrew and Brandon decided that, as the Clairette and Chenin were ready at the same time, they would co-ferment the two varieties. After two vintages, they tweaked the winemaking, fermenting the two grapes separately with wild yeasts in neutral oak, then blending afterwards. They kept the original proportions the same, with 70% Chenin Blanc and 30% Clairette, the Clairette adding some pithy, pink grapefruit bitterness to the concentrated baked apple richness of the Chenin.

Moving up the hill of their farm, their 56-year-old block of Chenin goes into the aptly named Old Bushvine Chenin Blanc. Yields from this block are tiny, enough to make a barrel and a half on a good year and considerably less on a bad year. The Chenin is interplanted with a little Crouchen or Cape Riesling, a barely-known variety that adds a jolt of freshness. Winemaking is kept simple and with minimal intervention: grapes are whole bunch basket-pressed and fermented in barrel, it ages in neutral oak for nine months.

It’s a concentrated, intense Chenin Blanc, the old vines providing depth and power to the wine. It sits between the Loire and South Africa in style, textural, rich and with bright red apple, green pear and lemon pith freshness – certainly a wine that can relax in the cellar for a while.

But it’s not all modern cape classics. Skin-Contact is predominately Chenin Blanc – a mixture from all five of their plots, with 11% of their recently planted Macabeo added. 13 days of skin contact lends a gentle bronze hue, there’s an interplay between the pithy, phenolic bitterness and the fresh citrus characters, that lend plenty of drinkability.

“I don’t want to make something too outrageous, too hipster! I enjoy skin-contact wines. For me, it’s a true expression of the fruit, the organics, the tannic structure you get from white grapes is something delicious.”

A Sustainable Future

As with all young projects, Wightman & Sons are evolving year by year, refining their wines and developing in confidence and quality.

There’s a contingency plan of sorts – Brandon has just finished studying winemaking, and has begun making his own wine, also completing a vintage with Tremayne Smith of Blacksmith Wines. Despite Brandon’s increasing involvement, the wine bug has definitely bitten Andrew hard.

“I suppose the idea is that he’ll come back and essentially take over making the wine. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop!”

If you’d like to taste the Wightman & Sons wines, please get in touch.

The long game: Leo Erazo’s journey towards sustainability. Part 1.

Leo Erazo is a winemaker with a global perspective: after university he travelled for 10 years, studying biodynamic methods in California; soil types in South Africa; and geology in New Zealand before returning to South America. Rogue Vine was his first project in Itata, which he started with Justin Decker, while he was still working at Altos los Hormigas in Mendoza. I spoke to him over Zoom about the uniqueness of Itata, and why he’s committed to organic farming and making wine sustainably.

Four unique factors in Itata: dry farming, ungrafted vines, cool climate, old vines.

Leo explained that they were getting to know Itata at the start: “Which always takes time, you dig a soil pit but you won’t always find the holy grail straight away! It’s part of a learning process, and mapping.

“We’ve been lucky to work in Itata, it has a combination of factors, which can create very special wines. Dry farming, unlike anywhere else in Chile, there’s no irrigation used. This is something the old world and the new world always have a battle about. The second and most important thing, we don’t use rootstocks. All the vines are on their own roots. We all know that rootstocks influence the performance of the vine a lot. Here you get the true expression of the variety because it’s on it’s own roots. The place where we’re working is a fresh cold climate. We have a lot of influence from the Pacific. We don’t need to adjust the acidity, the natural acidity is good enough. The alcohol is moderate, we’re around 11% for the whites and 12.5% for the reds. The wines are very balanced”.

“We have so many old vines, I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world where you have such a high concentration of old vines all together, you probably have about 5,000ha. It’s unique”.

The old vine conundrum.

I asked Leo if there is a limit a vines lifespan.
“This challenges all that we’ve learned at university as viticulturalists. Looking at the differences between how we’ve managed vineyards in the last 30-40 years, where you have to replant because the yields become too low. Here the yields are still OK. It varies, in the lower altitude vineyards with higher soil fertility you have higher yields, and the higher vineyards with lower fertility you have lower yields.

“But we don’t have mechanisation here, the vineyards have been planted and worked in the same way, by hand, since the beginning, since 1551 when vines arrived here. The only change was when herbicides became popular, and some people started using them, to avoid doing it all by hand. So it’s either by hand or by foot, no tractors, no engines, nothing. I don’t know if that makes a difference. I’m working in a vineyard which we bought four years ago, that was planted in 1798. I’m the 6th generation, it’s been in the same family so we have records, normally you don’t know. You suspect they’re over 100 years old, but you don’t have it documented. It still produces a good amount of grapes and makes good quality wine”.

Rebalancing the system

I asked Leo what yields they are getting: There’s a short and a long answer!
“The short answer is that a balanced vineyard can produce 1-1.5kg (per plant). When we initially start to work organically the yields went down to 300-400g. But I’m adamant I want to farm organically/regeneratively”.

“You have the environmental component, we don’t want to keep screwing it up. But also the quality is completely different, the wines are much better”.

“All the vineyards that we’ve bought for the project, were using fertilizer, the fertility was artificially kept up by adding chemicals. When we took those things out, and when we took the herbicides out, the (eco)system is weak. We see a drop in yields for the first three-four years, but then it starts to increase, by the seventh year the yield is going up again to the normal yields. That’s the long answer”!

“When you take the vineyard from this intensive care system, try to recreate the ecosystem, and bring back the fertility of the system itself, it takes seven years”.

“During the process you get less grapes. But once you’re there the quality of the grapes is so much better, in balance, it makes sense. And seven years out of 100, the vines have a long way to go.

“Something nobody talks about is the flavour, like with vegetables, when you mass produce vegetable hydroponically without the trace minerals in soil. The tomato is the best example, intensively farmed tomatoes don’t even smell, unlike a tomato from your garden, you touch the plant and you smell tomato. It’s the same with wine, they might have colour, alcohol, acidity, but they’re tasteless”.

Leo is in this for the long term. In the next part of our conversation he explains about they steps he taking to make his winery more sustainable and reduce his carbon footprint. Leo Erazo’s journey towards sustainability. Part 2.

Water is life: Leo Erazo’s journey towards sustainability. Part 2.

Since moving back to Itata Leo Erazo (Rogue Vine) has built a sustainable winery, and started planting some new vineyards close to the coast. I spoke to him about these, and the steps he’s taken to lower the carbon footprint of his wines.

“Together with the ‘granitic project’ which is in Guarilhue I found a place close to the coast, where there is a lot of slate. I’m very excited, you have the Pacific influence, the rock, it’s completely different to the other areas I’ve worked in Itat, there’s nobody to emulate. We’re not starting from zero, we’re trying varieties that work well on schist soils in Europe: Albariño, Chenin Blanc, Riesling, Semillon, Chardonnay, and a little bit of Pinot Noir to see how that works.

He started planting in 2017. So they have started to harvest grapes, but last year yellow jacket wasps ate almost everything. “We harvested 20kg out of the 1000 we expected. They originate from Europe so there aren’t natural predators in Chile”. Leo isn’t sure why they were such a problem this year, perhaps with the dry conditions there was less of another food source.

Building sustainably from the start

Leo explained that he’s worked at big wineries, and sometimes you can see that sales and marketing are the driving force for some viticultural and winemaking decisions. “But for smaller artisanal wineries like Rogue we are doing this because we love it. If you just want to earn money there are 100 more profitable businesses than making wine. It’s a work of love and of compromise”.

“We knew from the beginning that we wanted to work organically and sustainably, and this means all the way through. The first thing was to learn and understand how to be efficient in our use of energy. How we can generate our own energy and become self-sufficient, a lot of energy globally is made from polluting sources, charcoal or burning fossil fuels”.

“We built the winery to use the minimum electricity possible, and what we need to function comes from solar energy, we still have a network connection but we seldom use it, maybe after a run of cloudy days in winter, but we’re mostly 100% solar”.

Nobody talks about water use

“The second thing was the use of water, we have reduced use from circa six litres of water per litre of wine, to 1.5 litre. Water is a scarce resource, but nobody talks about it, we don’t get rain for six or seven months of the year”.

“When people visit they ask how many sulphites I use but nobody cares how much water we use”!

“Wineries are always washing down, particularly those who use less sulphur! We collect water from the winery roof and the roof of our house. We have 57,000l storage tanks and a large pond, I don’t know the capacity, but it’s pretty big! We also created a system of wetlands to filter waste water from the winery. They have to clean the winery waste water to get rid of grape skin particles and lees, which are very reductive. We have made a system to oxygenate the water and keep it alive, the water filters through plants and sand. And we use this to water a new vegetable garden. We’ve made a small grassland, we work with a horse, it’s good to have grass for the horse during the dry times”.

“Now we have more water we’re making life around the water – water is life, it’s a straight line”.

“You see it in the wildlife as well, the insects and birds have increased exponentially. Species we’ve never seen here are coming because the ecosystem is here”.

Simple solutions come from observation

Climates and ecosystems vary greatly around the world so the steps Leo has been making might not apply directly in other countries, but I asked him if he had any advice for wineries looking to put sustainable practices into place.

“It comes from observation, the systems we have applied are not expensive or high tech. Of course it’s not going to be the same here as in Austria or Australia, but the principles are the same – if you have water and you want to keep it alive, you need to add oxygen through plants, then algae won’t grow and mosquitos won’t take over. It might seem difficult, but if we share information other people won’t make the same initial mistakes that I did. For example when I first collected water from the roof, I didn’t have a filter so I got dirt, dead lizards… in the water and it went off. Then I started to use a filter that cost £3, a cheap plastic thing, and I avoided that problem! Simple things, you just need to use your imagination.

“Another example, because we’re close to the Pacific, we channel the air currents that come at three to four in the afternoon on a hot day, it’s natural air conditioning, it cools everything down. We built the winery from recycled materials, corrugated zinc and old windows”.

“If one guy like me can do it, large wineries that earn millions of dollars per year, they can also do it”.

“Now more wineries are becoming organic, which is great, and it’s because the market is asking for it. So if the market, sommeliers, people in the wine trade also start to ask: where is your electricity coming from? The consumers can be the driving force to make the wineries change”.

I asked Leo about other steps he’s taking to be more sustainable.

Minimal packaging

“The first thing was the bottles, we work with lighter Burgundy bottles, supply has been a bit difficult over the last two years during the pandemic, we use the lightest we can. We don’t use a capsule, it means nothing, it’s just a dressing. And we’ve been working on the tape, for the boxes, to get one that is biodegradable. It’s small steps, but it makes sense”.

“You can’t be halfway with sustainability – be organic but use lots or water, use electricity from fossil fuels – it doesn’t work like that”.

On carbon footprint

A few years ago his Belgian importer was asking about the carbon footprint associated with shipping wine from Chile, when he could buy wine from ‘next door’ in France. “I was thinking about it. I work in Cahors, and I did a calculation, in Cahors farming organically, just for sulphur, we pass 14 times per season with a tractor to keep powdery mildew away. That doesn’t include other soil work and mechanical weed control. If you calculate how many kilometres the tractor passes to cover a hectare, we’re burning a lot of petrol, that’s a high CO2 output”.

“In Itata, everything is by hand, there are no tractor passes, so that’s zero output per hectare here. Which goes some way to compensate the distance travelled by boat of the wine coming to Europe”.

“Rogue just use a strimmer to cut their grass, they have a car, that’s their carbon inputs. The electricity is solar, then the transport of the wines to market”.

In praise of paperwork!

What’s the balance between doing the right thing, measuring that you’re doing the right thing, and making good wine?
“When I started doing the organic certification, for the first few years it seemed like so much paperwork. And I love spending my time on the farm rather than sitting at a desk. But by doing the paperwork it forced me to keep track of a lot of things I wasn’t keeping track of, and so helped me to improve things. So in the end, having this stack of paperwork I need to do – which is very painful it takes days – helps you to improve your system”.

“You think you’re doing the best you can, but it’s good to reflect and have controls”.

“Going through the process of certification was positive. Sharing information is important. I enjoy visiting other producers, sometimes you just talk, share a glass of wine, but you make connections which help your understanding. And what I enjoy most about wine is drinking it”!

That’s definitely a sentiment we can get on board with. Read about the new eminently drinkable Pét-nats Leo is making exclusively for Indigo. And learn more about the unique Itata region in: Leo Erazo’s journey towards sustainability. Part 1

William Downie: The devil’s in the detail

Young Guns of Wine, a barometer for new talent on the Aussie wine scene once described Bill Downie as: This century’s original enfant terrible of wine. A cheerful iconoclast that scythed through convention. The Bill Downie who we spoke to last week didn’t seem like a hellraiser, he was self-deprecating and honest, and incredibly thoughtful about the viticultural and winemaking decisions he makes.

Born and raised in Gippsland, Bill has been making wine in southern Australia and Burgundy for 15 years. In 2006 he had the chance to put his ideas into practice fully when he bought a farm and planted a vineyard 20 minutes from where he grew up. Gippsland is 1.5 hours southeast of Melbourne, below the Yarra Valley, east of the Mornington Peninsula. His farm is on the foothills of the Strzelecki Range, below the Great Dividing Range. The land is north facing, and although most people think Australia is dry and hot, this is cool climate with high rainfall, you can see a ski resort in the distance. Initially he purchased fruit from the Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula and South Gippsland for his own label, but now his vineyard is established he has focussed on Gippsland, and stopped making single vineyard wines from Yarra and Mornington.

Bill explained that although Gippsland is the second largest GI in Australia by geographical area, it’s the smallest by production. This is reflected in that the first wine we tasted, Cathedral, the 2021 vintage is made from grapes he bought from Mornington and King Valley, there isn’t enough fruit coming from their vineyard, or available in the local area. It was named Cathedral because originally the grapes came from a vineyard in the Cathedral Ranges (north of the Yarra Valley), but due to recent poor harvests he had to look elsewhere. It’s an excellent introduction to his wines. It’s aromatic, with crunchy cherry fruit on the nose, and a slight leafiness. The acidity is fresh, it’s mineral with fine tannins and a lightly textured finish.

“I hate comparisons, but it’s my Beaujolais, it’s not trying to tell you an origin story, it’s just meant to be a really good drink”!

The case for high density vineyards

He currently has two hectares of vineyards on the farm, he’s planting more and aiming for five. He planted at 10,000 vines per hectare, which is uncommon in Australia.

Why did he decide to plant at this high density?

“It’s a combination of factors. Earlier in my career I was obsessed with wine, now I’m obsessed with agriculture”. He spent some time in Burgundy early in his career. “One of the things which appealed to me about the wines from there, compared with a lot of new world Pinot Noir, is there’s a difference in structure in the wines. There’s a different relationship between tannin and texture, and mid-palette weight.

“There’s often a mid-palette sweetness in new world Pinot, and I was interested to understand why that was, because it wasn’t a character I enjoyed”.

“Part of the reason I was drawn to Burgundy was the absence of that sweetness, there was a definition and a balance to the wines which appealed to me. After looking at some other high density vineyards in Australia, and the wines that came from them, I realised that if you have a vine which is only ripening six bunches, as opposed to 30, the relationship between the various parameters of grape maturation change completely. You get a different density of phenolics, a completely different structure in the wine”.

“The only way to achieve this and have a balanced vine, what isn’t stuck in a vegetative cycle, is to plant at high density. Once I realised, there was no other option, I had to find a way to do it”.

Getting the viticulture right

It’s not just been a case of planting vines, looking after them for 3-4 years, and making wine. So far he’s only bottled and sold wine as named cuvees from the home vineyard twice in 14 years, because Bill has felt the wines haven’t delivered what he’s looking for.

Bill explained: The process of finding a piece of land he thought looked interesting; establishing a vineyard according to the principles he believed in, it’s certified organic, he hasn’t used herbicides since start, he doesn’t use machinery; learning how to work the vineyard with a horse has taken a long time. “Now that we’ve got to the point we have an understanding we’re expanding the plantings, you will see a wine from here”.

What has made the difference, what are they doing right now?

“A combination of things, part of it was learning how to compromise. Having worked a decade or more I was never willing to compromise on my regenerative agriculture principles, which meant no cultivation, no synthetic chemicals or fertilisers. And it turns out, we’re in a high rainfall area, higher than in Burgundy, one of the wettest places in Australia where vineyards are planted. We initially thought vigour would be a real problem, and chose to plant on devigorated rootstock (101-14 a Riparia cross), which doesn’t have good drought tolerance. Which we thought was fine as it rains all the time, except when you don’t cultivate you have grass species that grow year round. If it stops raining for ten days, which can happen in January or February, the grasses suck all the moisture from the top 50cm of soil in a couple of days. The vine leaves go yellow, and we don’t harvest fruit with enough natural acidity to make a balanced wine.

“The compromise is that we have started to do some cultivation, we disk a bit to cut back the grass in the mid-row, and we do some under vine cultivation to remove plants which compete with the vines for moisture. It took time to explore other pathways which might have mitigated that moisture deficit at the end of the season, we spent ten years building organic matter in the soils, but this wasn’t enough. So now we’ve started some light tillage, which should solve the majority of the problems”.

Searching for an ‘Australian-ness’

The next wine we tasted was Gippsland 2021, the wine is softer on the nose with pretty iris notes and savoury potpourri. On the palette it has a spicy edge, very fine persistent tannins, and a lovely weight to the fruit. Grapes mostly come from a Gippsland grower just on the south side of the Strzelecki Range, it sometimes includes a barrel or two of declassified fruit from his vineyard or one of the others he works. It has a slightly different character to the wines from his side of the Strzelecki, but still distinct from Mornington or Yarra.

Bill’s winemaking is consistent across the range. The only difference being that Cathedral is fermented in stainless steel and bottled early, whereas the other wines spend 9-10 months in mostly French oak, with some acacia barrels. He’s working on a project to use native Australian blackwood acacia timber for barrel production. He’s been milling timber and ageing staves for a around seven years, and is about to make some barrels. Acacia can have a perceptible flavour influence on wine, part of the reason he hasn’t made barrels until now is that he’s been seasoning the wood, he thinks it may need up to ten years.

“It’s an experiment. In the context of what we’re trying to do here, it doesn’t make sense to use French oak barrels if we’re trying to make a wine of place that speaks to the Australian landscape, which is not like anywhere else.”

“So we’ve been trying to figure out: is there some timber grown, are there trees in Australia that are suitable for barrel production; and what do they contribute to the character of the wine. Can we make a more Australian wine by using trees that grown in the forest at the back of the farm, than if we use French oak”?

They hand harvest everything into 10kg crates; bunches are hand sorted; everything is fully destemmed and transferred by gravity into into open wooden fermenters. Fermentation is hands off, there’s no temperature control, no pump overs or punch downs, no additions. The wine is pressed into tank after around four weeks of maceration, he doesn’t separate into fractions, and left to ferment to dry. The wine is then transferred to barrel, he makes a small SO2 addition post malo or pre bottling. Cathedral is filtered the others aren’t.

We asked his thoughts of the fashionable topic of stem inclusion.

“When I say we de-stem everything, I mean everything apart from the fruit from our own vineyard. Another reason we plant at 10,000 vines per hectare is that I feel it’s the only way to make 100% whole bunch wine which doesn’t taste of stems. The wines from here are 100% whole bunch, and they don’t taste stalky.

“I’m not opposed to stems, they have to come from the right vineyard, planted and managed in the right way, otherwise it’s a distraction from the truth of the place”.

Terroir reflection in the single vineyard wines

We moved on to his two single vineyard wines. The two vineyards are less than four kilometres apart, but they’re entirely different wines, despite having the same soil profile, geology, planting density and material. Camp Hill vineyard is about 12 kilometers northwest from his farm, it’s on a outcrop in the middle of the valley, the highest point between the Strzelecki and Great Dividing Range. It’s planted right on top of the hill.

“The vineyard gets the very first light that comes over the horizon in the morning, and the very last light as the sun sets in the evening. This wine is always about the sky, it’s light and bright, it’s floral, it’s never earthy or deep it’s about its connection to the sky. It’s a spacious wine, you have a sense of exposure of being right on top of the hill, certainly where compared to Bull Swamp“. (his other single vineyard wine).

“It’s all about florals, spice, the iron blood character is a feature of this area, the soils are very high in iron, and free draining”

Less is more

“Fruit grown in this area has the structure to give definition, but pump-overs and punch-downs are not a good way of extracting. In modern winemaking where you can de-stem and keep the berries intact, which wasn’t possible 30 years ago. Now, if I de-stem and don’t touch it, the skins are in contact with the juice 100% of the time, no cap forms, it’s a tank full of berries. The second I do a punch-down I bust up a bunch of berries and the skins float to the top, you have a cap above the liquid, and then you have to pump-over or punch-down to re-submerge the skins so they’re in contact with the liquid and extracting flavour and tannins. I’d have to do that three times per day, for the skins to be in contact with the wine 40% of the time, whereas if I don’t do anything at all they’re in contact with the liquid 100% of the time. It’s a more effective extraction, the compounds are water or alcohol soluble, they don’t require movement”.

“We’re trying to achieve skins in contact with liquid, the best way to do that is to carefully de-stem intact berries and leave them alone”!

Bull Swamp, is at a lower elevation and surrounded on three sides by hills, it’s a bit warmer (than Camp Hill), they harvest a couple of weeks earlier and see more maturity.

“Here you get a feeling of connection to the earth, the wine speaks about the soil, it’s denser, more earthy, more savoury, fruitier. People probably think that sounds like complete bullshit but I always feel like that”!

“The tannin structure reflects the richer soil with less sunlight exposure, but the vines are 40 years old, properly old, which changes the tannin structure”.

We’re excited to be working with Bill and have these thoughtful, expressive wines on our list. Get in touch if you’d like to taste the 2021s with us.

Old vines pull through: Márcio Lopes’ Douro wines

We’ve always loved Márcio’s benchmark Pequenos Rebentos wines from the Vinho Verde, they have incredible brightness and energy while still retaining a sense of character. So, when Márcio told us about his Proibido project, based in the Douro Superior, we were excited to find out more.

Vignerons seem to revel in making their life more difficult, and in Márcio’s case, he’s always been determined to make his life as busy as possible. He grew up in Porto and after university, decided to head to Australia, determined to enhance his burgeoning love of wine. He worked back-to-back vintages in Rutherglen and Tasmania, two regions that are a literal ocean apart in their terroirs and the style of wines they’re known for. In Rutherglen, Márcio connected to his Porto roots in learning the art of fortified wines and warm climate, full-bodied reds, while in Tasmania he grew to love the leaner elegance of their Chardonnays and Pinots. After two years in Australia, he headed back to Portugal, refreshed, invigorated and swirling with ideas.

Beginnings of a vigneron

“When I came back to Portugal, I wanted to get straight in. So, I started working in Vinho Verde, mainly Alvarinho, with Anselmo Mendes. At the same time, I was travelling to the Douro to make Port wines.

“Then I met my wife, and we now have two children, and I realised this life (the life of a vigneron) could happen, and I realised I could do this on my own”.

“I’m from Porto, I love Port wines, I grew up drinking them at my grandparents parties! Vino Fino is what we call it, the fortified styles that were just made and sold locally, not from the big houses“.

“I loved these wines growing up, so I decided if I can start one project, why not start two, one that is more personal to me”?

Douro Superior sits far inland from Porto, and is barely accessible through its snaking roads and towering, terraced vineyards. It’s the driest, warmest section of the valley.

“It’s a very dry region, it rains around 300 ml per year. We went straight into working organically, some plots are biodynamic – without the rain it’s easy and instinctive to work like that because the vines are exposed to fewer diseases”.

Trusting in nature

Márcio owns a 5-hectare vineyard that was planted in 1932 in the capital of the sub region, Vila Nova de Foz Côa, but also buys grapes from a trusted network of growers across the region.

 “We use small growers, people farming half a hectare, farming at 1,000 metres above sea level, people I found whilst travelling.

“Vines are different ages – from 8 to 102 years old – this contributes different elements to the wines, old vine intensity, and more immediate tannins and phenolics from the young vines. I help manage the plots with the vineyard owners so we can all work with a common vision”.

“I’m proud to say I work with 50 viticulturists across the Douro and Vinho Verde and none use herbicides or pesticides.

They’re part of the family. When I started working with them, they understood the right way to work, that natural treatments are enough”.

Soils here vary, beginning with schist in the vineyards on the banks of the river Douro and encompassing granite and quartz higher up the hills. With many of the vineyards planted at steep angles, work is done by hand, the vineyards are planted at very high density.

“We farm with horses and by hand because we don’t have space for machinery in the field, it’s a little bit like Champagne, we have 10,000 vines per hectare”.

“We work like this because it’s the only way that makes sense in these vineyards. I’m not poetic, but you can see these wines as our commitment to the land and the region.”

The wines

Márcio’s more classical bottling is the Anel Reserva, a rich but balanced blend of 50% Touriga Nacional, 40% Touriga Franca and 10% of old-vine indigenous varieties that are co-planted as a field-blend. The grapes come from schist-soil vineyards which are north-facing, and a little cooler than other vineyards in the region, allowing for more natural acidity. The grapes are destemmed and foot-trodden in granite lagars where they ferment for 10 days with wild yeasts, the wine then ages for 6 months before bottling.

 It’s a powerful wine that represents this dry valley region, concentrated and powerful but with some herbaceous freshness that keeps it drinkable, a wine that Marcio describes as a “crowd pleaser”, not in the flashy sense, but that it “tastes like the Douro”.

Marufo Tinto, sometimes called Mourisco Tinto, is less typical. A native variety to the Douro, used in Port-production, but often discarded by growers due to its lack of colour. Initially Marcio did this too, relegating it to blends where he used it to bolster their acidity.

“One day one of the growers told me that he was really proud of the fruit and that we should try it as a single-varietal wine. They are old, deep-rooted vines with a lot of character.

“It’s very light in colour, not typical for the table wines of the area, it’s a bit like Bastardo (Merenzao or Trousseau), perfumed and with very good acidity and freshness, very drinkable and juicy.”

It’s a low tannin variety, so they maximise extraction, keeping the grapes on skins in lagars for around two months. Fermentation is whole bunch, some years they include stems, if they’re ripe.

“People say that this is our out of the box wine, not particularly traditional for the area, but for me this is the type of wine I like to drink. I’m a Pinot lover and a Gamay lover. I like to make wines like that, but in our own style, the Douro style”.

The Climate Question

Already a warm region, climate change has inevitably changed the way that they farm in Douro Superior. 2022 has been a challenging vintage with warm and very dry conditions that meant that bunches did not form as they hoped. Once ripening had begun, though, they had to act fast.

 “The Douro can be a difficult region to work in and it’s just getting hotter and hotter. One day the potential alcohol is13% and the next day it’s 15-16%. You can see a difference between old and young vineyards. In the old vineyards, if you have 11% alcohol, the acidity is very high and the tannin isn’t ready. Then you get to 12% and the acidity has dropped to a steady level and the phenolics are ready and mature. In the new vineyards you need to get to 15% alcohol to get the tannins and phenolics right. But if you ask me, this means that the acidity level is nothing, so people correct and add acidity”.

So how does he navigate this issue?

“The most important thing is the fruit quality. If you use old vineyards with deep-rooted vines then they’re more resistant. Old vineyards, quality fruit and making sensible decisions – that’s the only way to manage it”.

If you’d like to taste Márcio’s Douro wines, please contact your sales rep.

Tasting the 2021 vintage with Johan Meyer in London.

Johan Meyer was in London for a whirlwind of visits this week, we caught up with him to taste the newly arrived Mother Rock and Brutal! wines.

Johan feels that the vineyards in South Africa got back of track in 2021 following the string of drought years. For the 2021 vintage they had a wet winter, cool spring and warm summer. He currently buys grapes across the Swartland, and has worked organically with the farms he sources from since 2012, but has difficulty persuading the growers to certify, he’s not sure why they’re so resistant to it.

He bought his own land in the north of Swartland in 2018, where he has built a house and a winery, and planted vines. He’ll pick the first grapes from his farm next year. This area is quite different to the south where the majority of planting currently are. Soils are Table Mountain sandstone. The days are warm with temperatures rising to 30 degrees, and the nights cool, dropping to 11 degrees. The name, Picket-Bo-Berg, translates as lookout in Afrikaans, you can see the ocean 30 kilometres away, and the site benefits from cool sea breezes.

It’s virgin land, Johan has planted 14 hectares so far, including half a hectare of Sauvignon Blanc which he wasn’t planning to do, but the soil analysis recommended it. Additionally he has a mix of reds and whites including Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Grenache Blanc, Marsanne, Roussanne and Palomino. He’s working to get the area recognised as a Ward within Swartland, it’s a cooler climate the the lower Swartland where grapes like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wouldn’t make sense.

Force Celeste Semillon 2021
Johan picks the grapes in two stages: a green first harvest for acidity; and a second pick a week later for more concentration. Around 10% is fermented on skins to bring a little texture.
Very fresh green juice, hedgerows and elderflower with a touch of passionfruit. The acidity is soft like ripe lemons with a long concentrated finish.

Brutal! Chenin 2021
Brutal! is Catalan slang for ‘cool’, the idea for the label was born at Bar Brutal in Barcelona when three winemakers, including Joan Ramon Escocda were drinking one night. The wines are made by different producers, what they have in common is that they are distinct from their other wines, and there is no added sulphur. For Johan’s cuvee he foot -crushes the grapes, then closes the tank allowing a semi-carbonic fermentation to run for 14 days, before finishing the wine in concrete. The wine has a lifted yellow apply nose, mouth-watering acidity and a long juicy tropical fruit finish.

Liquid Skin 2021
Chenin for Liquid Skin comes from a southeast facing site in Paardeberg, which is cooler than the Brutal vineyard. Johan crushes the grapes, but keeps the stems, and ferments them in concrete tank. 30% of the wine spends eight months on skins, the rest just 12 weeks giving a gentle copper hue. The 2021 has a delicate texture, juicy acidity and a squeaky clean green apple and apricot finish.

Brutal! Red 2021
Cinsault grown in the Swartland has high pH and low acid, making it tricky material for a low sulphur wine. To counter this Johan he picks some Carignan early, he presses off the juice to make his Force Celeste Rosé, but keeps the pomace and ferments Cinsault juice on these skins. The result is a zesty red with plummy fruit, a savoury touch and a mineral finish.

Casa Castillo: Mediterranean Spain earns its place in the sun

Casa Castillo has come a long way in the 30 years since José María and his father took their vineyards back from the tenant farmers, and made their first wines. Now they are considered among the best in Spain, credited by Luis Gutiérrez in ‘The New Vignerons’, his book highlighting the most exciting winemakers in Spain today, as having: “Changed the perception of both Jumilla and Monastrell”. Luis awarded their Pie Franco 2020 a perfect 100 points in his recent Wine Advocate report, describing it as: “An exceptional vintage the finest they have ever produced”.

This is quite an achievement in a region like Jumilla, which has little ambition to make fine wine, and most production still sells in bulk. But José María has been on a journey since those early days, always learning and improving: being more scrupulous in the cellar; and putting his faith in grapes like Monastrell , Syrah and Garnacha which express this Mediterranean place better. Trying different things also applies to wines, if you follow his Instagram feed you’ll see a hit parade of Burgundy, Barolo, Champagne, and others, how can you make great wine if you don’t know what you’re aiming for?

“The market isn’t your village – I’m not interested in being the best in my village or region – wine is drunk around the world”

José María Vicente

I caught up with Jose Luis Hernandez, who fell in love with Casa Castillo wines while working as a sommelier in the UK. Jose Luis returned to Spain to work harvest with José María during the pandemic, and when an opportunity arose jumped at the chance to join the team full-time as export manager in 2021.

Jose Luis (JL) – “I knew José María, my hometown is around 40 minutes from the winery, and I’d been a fan of the wines since I introduced the 2017 vintage of Pie Franco to the wine list at Hakkasan. I fell in love with Casa Castillo, it’s similar to my hometown, and I ‘get’ José María’s philosophy and approach to wine. [So when Hakkasan closed during the pandemic lockdown] I called him and asked if I could work as a harvest intern, to have the opportunity to see the whole process and learn”.

“José María is like an open book, you’re learning 24 hour a day, he’s always happy to share his knowledge”.

José María needed an extra pair of hands, but wasn’t in a position to take someone on at that point. Jose Luis returned for harvest in 2021, and after that he joined the team full time as export manager.

José María and his father started to replant with native varietals in 1985. I asked JL if these vines are hitting their stride now.

JL – “It’s not about vine age, it’s about having the right variety planted in the best place. In the past vines weren’t planted with quality in mind, there are some wineries in the area who have older vines, planted in unsuitable sites. At Casa Castillo 15-18 year old vines which were planted in the right place, with the right soils (for the variety), are producing amazing wines. They can compete with the older vines, sometimes they’re better”!

“We don’t carry a flag saying – old vines are best”!

And what has José María learned in terms of the best places for planting?

He has got to know the soils across the farm, which aren’t different to the rest of the area. It’s about his approach, he dry farms, and he’s changed the varieties. In the beginning they planted Cabernet Sauvignon, but the area is better suited to Mediterranean grapes – Monastrell of course, and Garnacha works really well.

“We’re not discovering anything, we’re following traditional methods: we look after our grapes”.

JL – “José María travels a lot, visiting wineries, trying different wines. That’s shaped his approach, he’s open to try different things. You have to be open minded, humble and gather information when you travel, be like a sponge. Doing this over the last 40 years, in the Rhone, Burgundy, Italy, has given him a global vision”.

[He’s looking for] “Precise, balanced, gastronomic wines which speak on the table”.

Monastrell has become a signature for the winery.

It’s not universally seen as a premium mono-varietal – but it has potential in the right place, and the right hands. Temperatures in Jumilla easily reach 32-35 degrees in the summer, but due to the altitude (around 750 metres above sea level) there is a high diurnal temperature range, which drops to around 20 degrees at night. “Without the diurnal range Monastrell would get too ripe, we’d have raisins”. They also harvest relatively early, which recently that has been the last week of August.

Jose Luis describes vinification at Casa Castillo as traditional. “Many other wineries do long extraction and macerations for Monastrell which (with its thick skins) makes it high tannin; it’s also high alcohol and you get baked flavours in the wine”.

They ferment in stone lagares (photo below). They keep around 20% whole bunch, it depends on the year, stems ripen in Jumilla, but you have to watch the amount so you don’t get an astringent wine. They put a layer of berries on the bottom of the lagar, which get crushed under their own weight and start to ferment aerobically, followed by a layer of whole bunches on top, which start to ferment semi-carbonically. Jose Luis says having both types of fermentation is key to their wine style. Fermentation is at high temperature, so the simple fruity aromatics evaporate. This gives a better representation of the terroir of the estate, the rosemary, pines and fig trees. The wine is transferred to old barrels to finish alcoholic fermentation. Other producers often use a lot of new oak, which masks the character of the variety, Casa Castillo haven’t bought a barrique since 2008.

Luis Gutiérrez writes about Continental and Mediterranean vintages in Spain, which give rise to different wine styles, tell me about the 2020 and 2021 vintages?

JL – “Jumilla has a continental climate, but is only a 45 minute drive from the Mediterranean, which has more influence on the vineyards in some years”.

The last two vintages, 2020 and 2021 have been perfect: rain in spring and just a little before harvest. This has given grapes with equilibrium, balance and precision, which comes across in the purity, balance and minerality of the wines”.

For José María, a medium to low yielding year is the perfect Mediterranean year, with freshness added by those rains.

What future plans do you have?

JL – “We’re in a good place with the winemaking. There is potential to grow the vineyards, 171 hectares of the 400+ hectare estate is currently planted, but we want to keep biodiversity, with olive and almond trees on the farm. We want to grow slowly and sustainably”.

José María has described the evolution of the estate as like a family tree. Each wine represents a moment in the history, parcel wines with a family connection. His grandfather planted the Pie Franco vines; his father Las Gravas; the family have got to know the land and respect it, and will leave it to the next generation who will hopefully make wine.

If you’d like to find out more about the project, and taste the 2019 and 2020 vintages José María and Jose Luis will be in London on 24-26 October, drop us a line if you’d like to taste with them.

In conversation with Maria Castro.

Álvaro Castro represents a contemporary vision of Portuguese wine, one that emphasises elegance, refinement and restraint. Wines that have freshness and immense drinkability. We spoke to his daughter Maria to find out more about the estate and their project.

Álvaro inherited Quinta Pellada from his parents in 1980, he released his first wines in 1989, and his daughter Maria joined the winemaking team full-time in 2000. Maria studied Biotechnological Engineering at university, and after spending a vintage in Bordeaux she returned home to apply her knowledge and help her father refine the winemaking processes.

The region

The Dão is cooler than the nearby Douro Valley, it has fresh, damp winters and dry, warm summers. The region is surrounded by three mountain ranges, Buçaco, Caramulo and Serra da Estrela, which provide a shield from the Atlantic winds. Álvaro’s vineyards are planted in Vila Nova de Tazém, in the foothills of the Serra da Estrela, sitting between 450-650 metres above sea level.

“Dão is a cool region. At night the temperature really drops; it’s why with our whites, you really feel the acidity working directly on your palate. They’re fresh”. Maria says.

“And the reds are elegant, not full-bodied. They’re long wines rather than large wines”.

Doing things the Castro way

They work with local grape varieties that they feel are able to capture and express the essence of the region. The whites are made from Encruzado, Cerceal Branco and Bical, while the reds use Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo), Alfrocheiro, Jaen (Mencia), Tinta Amarela and Tinta Cão, all sourced from three distinct vineyard plots: Quinta da Pellada, Quinta da Saes and Outeiro.  Quinta da Pellada has their oldest vines, which are over 60 years old. Their approach is instinctive and emotion-led.

“My father and I, feel more and more that we want to produce less wine… Less but better, because we can control the process and focus on the details”.

There’s a singularity and instinctiveness to this approach, an artisanal producer led by their love of their vineyards and their region, rather than by financial gain. They work organically in the vineyards, but choose not to label their wines such:

“I don’t feel it’s correct to put it [organic] on the label, we don’t do it to sell wine, we do it because it’s our way.”

She admits, though, that their farming has attracted more interest since awareness around farming and sustainability has heightened in recent years:

 “Things changed a bit for us around 5 years ago, when there was more interest in natural wines. People started visiting and asking about the way we farm, and the way we work in the cellar, and were saying to us – you’re doing it biodynamically, you’re doing it naturally!”

“So I started to research and realised that we are practicing organic, with our methods, and have been for more than 20 years. Why? Because the results are better. We’ve seen over a long period of time.”

Looking after 3 separate sites, making over 10 different cuvées, farming organically for over 20 years and making wine for over 30 years must be exhausting. So has Alvaro retired and decided to leave behind the busy life of being an independent vigneron?

“He’s retired officially, but he’s still working, he just does what he likes now which is making the wines and working in the vines! He leaves me to visit London and do tastings and he stays in the vines!”

Maria and Álvaro personify a fiercely independent winemaking ethos, and produce wines that speak of where they’re from- wines that are thoroughly contemporary and grounded in history.

Maria will be visiting London between 22-23 June, please get in touch if you’d like to taste with her. She’ll also be pouring at FESTA Portuguese Wine Festival at the London Tobacco Dock on 24-25 June.