Garage Wine Co - Carinena Truquilemu Single Vineyard 2019

The 2019 Truquilemu Vineyard follows the path of the brilliant 2018 with moderate alcohol (13.1%) and great freshness and acidity, a tad below in refinement (within the authentic and rustic character of the zone and the wines), from the old vines on the Coastal Range mountains where the soils have lots of quartz, full of crystals on decomposed granite with silty and sandy texture. The cool place and the soil provide very fresh wines even in warmer and drier years, worked following ancestral traditions and pruned with the moon cycles but not to a modern biodynamic calendar, but rather with local custom. Tasting the different wines from the same vineyard from 2018 and 2019 was fascinating, and the wines didn't stop changing in the glass for hours. I think all these wines are going to develop nicely in bottle. 10,021 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."