Garage Wine Co. - Cariñena CRU Truquilemu 2019

The 2019 Cru Truquilemu has even lower alcohol (12.5%) but a little less acidity and higher pH than the 2018. This Cariñena field blend comes from a section of the old Truquilemu vineyard that they have been vinifying for 20 years now and is cultivated with a combination of original methods of cultivating the old vines—i.e., farmed by hand and horse, accompanied by the lens, analysis and scientific ideas of Professor Alvaro Peña [Garage partner] and their in-house PhD in viticulture. This is the fruit of precise focus on small pieces of the vineyard, fermented separately in open-top 1,500- and 2,500-kilo lagar fermenters, using punch-downs and more full clusters and stems than in the regular Truquilemu. They use first-class barrels that are third-use or older and age the wines slowly over two winters, but the wines never have any notes from the wood—the barrels act as neutral containers that allow the wines to breath and develop. The 2018 feels a little more complete than this, which is still amazing. 4,229 bottles were filled in January 2021.

There are now 16 different wines produced by Garage Wine Co., one of my favorite producers in Chile. I tasted two vintages from each of their wines (so a lot of bottles), mostly 2018 and 2019, some of the best wines they have ever produced. They now farm 36 hectares of vineyards, sell some premium grapes to well-known wineries and produce their own wines. They are dynamic, and there are always new things, like their first Cru bottlings, what they say is a cut above the single-vineyard wines.

Tasting Garage Wine Co. wines is always an exciting moment, as the wines have strong personalities and are among the best produced in Chile, and Derek Mossman's explanations are always amusing, enriching and fun. I reproduced a lot of the stuff he told me about their wines in my tasting notes, because I thought it was worth sharing. Many of these wines start off earthy and sometimes reductive and benefit from the time in the glass and possibly decanting in advance.

There are always many changes in places, Caliboro, fermentations, more stems in some of the wines, more concrete, more tinaja, amphora and foudre, less extraction, gentler vinifications, the business, Pilar is now the CEO of the company, some new wines, Cabernet from the south and what they call their Cru after 14 years in Maule. In essence, they just say, "We revive old vineyards, practicing regenerative farming—to grow tastier fruit."