Our group arrived at the hotel in Providencia in Santiago over a couple of days, some coming from Argentina (a brave group on their third consecutive tour!), others arriving fresh from the chilly UK. The weather in Santiago was glorious – blue skies, pleasant temperatures in the morning if a bit warm in the afternoons. We sat outside on our first night dinner at the Ambrosia restaurant in the northern suburb of Vitacura and enjoyed a beautiful (visually and gastronomically) meal, with a selection of small plates to start and mostly fish for main – hake was on particularly good form. A Sauvignon Blanc from Leyda and three Pinot Noirs went down very well too.
At 9am on Tuesdsay we were on the coach, and our driver Ubaldo navigated the morning rush hour to take us south towards the Maipo Valley, Chile’s first significant wine growing region. Our destination was the Maipo Andes sub region, which Tim explained en route is the most westerly of three regions that span from the Pacific ocean (Maritim) across the flat central valley east of the coastal mountains (Intra Cordilleras) to the foothills of the Andes.
For those of us who had just been in Argentina everything looked extremely green and fertile, though we were to learn that water is a scarce, and possibly declining, resource in Chile, and treated as very precious. The road started to climb and wind a bit, and we then passed through the gates to Fundo Luguai and up the track to the amazing winery of Perez Cruz.
Carolina, who hosted our tour, welcomed us and explained about the history of the estate, originally bought by the Perez Cruz family in the 1960s for cattle ranching, but converted to vine production when they discovered what brilliant terroir they were sitting on. They now have 240ha of vines, planted since 1993, and only make wine from their own grapes. They were in the middle of harvest so we regularly dodged grapes being moved around.
In a block of fairly recently planted Cabernet Sauvignon we learnt that the Perez Cruz estate is restless in its efforts to improve what it does. They are very focussed on their terroris: they have mapped their soils (a combination of rockier colluvial soils that descend from the mountains, and finer alluvial soils carried by rivers), and use drones to support precision agriculture, measuring virtually vine by vine the levels of water in the soil, the rate of photosynthesis, and at harvest time the ripeness of the grapes. This means they now harvest individual rows rather than whole blocks, in order to ensure only the best quality grapes go into their wines.
The magnificent winery, built to replicate the curves of a barrel, is oriented east-west so captures cooling breezes from the ocean, with a high vaulted ceiling providing shade, so no air conditioning is required. We stopped briefly to look at some grapes going into the destemmer and then descended into their barrel room, where surrounded by a lot of barrels, we enjoyed a tasting hosted initially by Carolina and then by Germán Lyon, their head winemaker, who had kindly taken a break from his busy schedule to join us and tell us more.
We tasted their Gran Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon, the biggest volume line they make, followed by Limited Edition Syrah, Carmenère and Cot. All had lovely freshness, and were drinking beautifully, thanks to spending a year or more in barriques, a key element of Perez Cruz winemaking. With Germán we tasted three vintages of Liguai, their icon wine, developed in the early 2000s to present the very best of their Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Carmenère grapes, picked at optimal ripeness and given fairly extensive exposure to new oak. I was rather fearing a Parker fruit bomb, but these were elegant wines, beautifully balanced and still showing great freshness.
Germán also has his own winery, owned with his wife’s family and this was our destination next. Vinos LOF (which means clan in Mapuche) were a bit higher up the mountain side, now we felt really close to the Andes. Their modern winery was at a much smaller scale to Perez Cruz, and their approach to winemaking quite different – not a barrique in site!
We took a quick wander into their closest vineyard (planted with Syrah) accompanied by the winery cat, who you can see at the top of the blog.
They ferment and then rest their wines in concrete, the objective being to express fully the grapes themselves without oak influence. Carmen, a family friend, and Carlos, Germán’s brother in law, hosted our visit, and we learnt about the history of the winery, the deep involvement of Francisca (Germán’s wife) and her parents and siblings. Its scale is kept to what the family can cope with, and they are happy to experiment with different approaches and styles. Some of us even had a go at applying the wax seal to their bottles, though we suspected their handiwork was unpicked later by Ingrid, who specialises in labelling the bottles ready for sale.
In the winery we watched Carlos descend into one of the tanks, and tasted wines at different stages of fermentation from the concrete tanks. They grow Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, and the wines we tasted over lunch on their beautiful terrace showed wonderful freshness, and pleasantly low levels of alcohol. These grapes are harvested earlier to achieve this lighter style, and spend nearly two years in tank after fermentation to allow a gentle evolution – they had lost nothing of their flavour or concentration as a result.
A rosé made from Syrah, which spent nine months in concrete egg, had lovely flavour and was a beautiful wine to accompany our starter of white bean purée with vegetables, and we tried both the current and older vintages of their Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon pure varietals, with perfectly cooked roast beef. We also tried their Rutero, a wine they make each year that they experiment with, this vintage being a red blend made with no added sulphites (clearly successful). A rich cake finished our meal, and we sadly departed from this stunningly beautiful place, keeping in mind the AirBnb they have handily opened…
The drive back to Santiago went like a flash, possibly because I spent quite a bit of it dozing.
