Pais + Cinsault, Itata Valley, Chile

A lifted, mineral and aromatic OLD vine Chilean red blend. Winemakers Daniela & Pablo of Vinos Mingaco are huge proponents of minimal intervention winemaking, but their goals span much farther than their vineyards – can you say ACTIVE REFORESTATION!? They have adopted ‘forest farming’ techniques and marine substrate preparations, carrying out tasks in accordance with the biodynamic calendar. They also interplant different species in order to foster biodiversity, improve soil health and retain more, life-sustaining water in their sun-trodden soils. FUN FACT! Mingaco comes from the Quechua work ‘mink’akuy', meaning ‘to ask someone for help promising something in return’, evoking for us feelings of an exchange, a symbiosis and clear commitment to harmony they wish to foster in the natural world. This blend of over 120-year-old, ungrafted, savoury and tannic pais (or mission, 60%) and 50-year-old, floral and berried cinsault (40%) is grown on clay soils of granitic origin, sprinkled with quartz. The grapes are fermented in an open top vessel under the shade of an oak tree for 12 days before being pressed and matured for eleven months in rounding, used American oak barrels and left without additions or subtractions. Sour woodiness, sweetly aromatic cherry vinegar VA lift, orange skins, bloody minerality, rose from the nose to the tongue & salmonberries carry everything their back to the end. Pour alongside The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka.