2021 ALICE LESTRANGE PIPEÑO PASTICHE MOSCATEL

Vineyard: Moscatel de Alejandría (75%) from Chorrillios, Itata. Chasselas from La Unión, Itata. Chemical-free farming.

Two very distinct cool sites, one SW and SE facing, and the other, La Unión, coastal. Separate picks and separate one-tonne ferments over the month of March.

Fully destemmed using the zaranda (hand destemming on a traditional wooden screen), leaving a lot of whole berries. 2/3 of the grapes were pressed to stainless when dry, after about a month on skins, the remaining third was taken in its entirety to this blend. The wine stayed on 30% skins and sous voile until January 2022 when I racked off the juice. It stayed ullaged and again sous voile for another month until bottling. 25ppm of So2 was added prior to bottling. 

LAS FERMENTADAS

 My winery is open to any woman who wants to invest in and make natural wine and ferments. It's a difficult industry to learn in for anyone, especially for women, and especially in deeply machista and discriminatory rural Chile. Women are invited to make natural wine collaboratively: we all buy the grapes (each woman buying what she can afford) and make the wines together, usually with one of us leading the winemaking decisions. We then buy bottles and corks, collaborate with female artists for the labels, find buyers, export, pay income tax - the whole process. I provide the space, the fermenters, the logistics chain, but the idea is that each woman understands and takes a risk in the whole process, and she has the opportunity to springboard from there if they choose. My collaborator Cindy Azua is the original fermentada, she now as her own label that I proudly import. In 2021 Isi Munita (raw-milk cheesemaker and chef) and Coline Marre (french oenologist) joined the winery team, and these wines have just landed in Australia. In 2022 vigneron Soledad Caamaño contributed her grapes and hands. We have learnt so much from making wine collaboratively and working in a radically different environment.