Viñedos de Alcohuaz

Viñedos de Alcohuaz is a new winery put together by Patricio Flaño with winemakers Marcelo Retamal and Juan Luis Huerta high up in the Andes in the bone dry Elqui Valley, best known for its Piscos, the brandy like grape spirit that is the national spirit of both Chile and neighboring Peru.

At 2,200m altitude, the vines are a couple of hundred metres above the region’s highest plantations of Moscatel and Pedro Ximenez, which are grown for making into Pisco, Chile’s brandy, which takes its name from the town of Pisco, located at 1,300m in Elquí – a little further down the valley from Alcohuaz.

When the wines from Alcohuaz are officially launched later this year – Bocanáriz restaurant in Santiago already carries them – Alcohuaz will become Chile’s highest commercial plantation, replacing Viña Falernia, Elquí’s first table wine producer, and owner of the Huanta vineyard, which rises to an altitude of 2070m – now Chile’s second highest table wine producing plantation.

And when one considers the personalities behind Alcohuaz, that is perhaps no surprise. Key to the operation are nonagenarian and savvy Santiago businessman Patricio Flaño; De Martino’s highly regarded and innovative winemaker Marcelo Retamal; and local Pisco producer and former local town mayor Juan-Luis Huerta.

Together, later this year, they will roll out two wines nationwide in Chile: a top-end Syrah dominant blend from the 2011 vintage called Rhu – a word describing a spiritual space between the living and eternal worlds – priced around US$50, and a further red blend called Grus (named after the common crane) from the 2014 harvest, costing approximately US$30.

So far, just 2,200 bottles of Rhu 2011 have been produced, and 8,000 of Grus in its inaugural 2014 vintage, although Alcohuaz hopes to peak at over 9,000 cases (108,000 bottles) when all the vineyards reach maturity.

“We’ve been so focused on the production-side that we are only just thinking about the commercial side, and the idea is to sell the wines in Chile, as well as here, in the Elquí Valley,” Juan-Luis Huerta told db last month during a visit to Alcohuaz.