Based in Mingre, southwest of Talca and halfway to the sea, J. Bouchon farms 120-year-old país vines in the traditional method, allowing them to grow wild, as vines do, climbing up into the trees at the edge of the vineyard. They make this wine as it would have been made 120 years ago, destemming the bunches by forcing them through the woven sticks of a zaranda, working over a cement vat where the grapes ferment without additions, aging the wine in cement and bottling it unfiltered. It’s a long way to travel from Mingre to Massachusetts, so it was surprising how much life this wine sustained, impervious to the distance from home, continuing to morph and grow with each taste, starting green, with a hint of tomato leaf, turning cool, toward raspberries and the tannins of their seeds, slipping into silky grace as delicious fruit completes the structure of a grand cru of Chile.
Vine Connections, Sausalito, CA
95
J. Bouchon 2020 Maule Salvaje País (Best Buy)
$20
Every week, our editors highlight a wine that intrigued them in our blind panel tastings, expanding on their tasting note in this space. These are entirely editorial choices; there are no paid placements. Subscribers can also access the original tasting note by searching here.
Joshua Greene is the editor and publisher of Wine & Spirits magazine.
This story appears in the print issue of October 2021.
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