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Wine Description
The Story
Viña Ventisquero and their trio of avant-garde winemakers Alejandro Galaz, Felipe Tosso and Sergio Hormazabal who, accepted the somewhat sizeable challenge back in 2007, are on a mission to bring the ‘extreme’ wines of Chile’s unchartered Atacama Desert to the top of the world stage.
Making wine in Chile’s most northerly vineyards, and in one of the driest regions on earth, was never going to be easy. Situated 22km from the Pacific Ocean coast, and over 350km north of Santiago, vineyards experience warm days (averaging 24oC during the ripening season), cold nights and foggy mornings.
Soils suffer from extreme salinity, are difficult to irrigate and the general hostility of the environment causes several and severe problems both for vineyard growth and wine production.
Origin: D.O. Atacama
Variety: Ungrafted Pinot Noir 100%
Name: Named after the Tara salt flat in northern Chile, in the world’s driest desert, the immense Atacama, where just 20mm of rain fall each year, these wines are a triumph of determination. The area is influenced by the nearby Pacific Ocean and every morning the land is blanketed by the coastal fog known as the Camanchaca, which offers a brief respite to the sun-baked landscapes of Northern Chile. With this unique geography and in the absence of coastal mountains, the winds blow directly from the ocean to the vineyard, transforming the otherwise desert climate into a cool, quasi-Mediterranean climate.
Winemaking: The grapes were harvested into small 12-kilo bins on the morning of 1 April 2011 and transported to the winery by refrigerated truck. The must was then fermented with native yeasts in small, open 300-kilo tanks without any further additives. Pump-overs were used two to three times a day, with fermentation at ambient temperatures of between 15°C and 25°C. At the end of the fermentation process, there was a single addition of SO2. The wine was then aged in fifth use, 228-litre Burgundy barrels for 14 months. The wine was neither clarified nor filtered.
Tasting notes: This wine is a beautiful ruby-red colour and has a complex nose with cherry aromas intermingled with notes of mushroom and earth. The bouquet is shy on opening but has greater expression given time. It is intense in the mouth, with crisp acidity, firm tannins and good structure. The minerality comes through clearly on the palate and the calcareous origin of the soil and the marine influence of the vineyard lend this wine an almost salty element. Tara is an intense expression of its origin.
Taste: A beautiful light ruby red with a complex nose of cherry and raspberry aromas intermingled with notes of mushrooms, fallen leaves and forest floor. On the palate, intense, crisp acidity with firm silky tannins with good structure. Minerality, tension and salinity thanks to the influence of the Ocean and Soil are the trademarks of this wine.
Wine Information
Production: 487 bottles (bottled by hand)
Alc: 12.9%
pH: 3.1
Residual sugar: 2.2 g/L
