Here’s an interview with José Inácio Maturana:
Calameo
Revista Vinicola Ed. #57 (en Español):
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I looked through a bunch of older wine books and other references, and couldn’t find anything on Monte Verde. Didn’t have time to do a deeper dive. This “signs of past seepage” bottle just sold for $338. With a vintage date, I’d expect it to have been better than typical quality, and to have been released after Repeal, with maybe a decade cask/tank aging.
Btw, I recall our Communion wine was a tawny-ish fortified wine. Warming and comforting. I’d guess it was made with either Mission or Zinfandel, maybe averaging 3 years aging. It came in jugs, and I recognized the producer name, but that’s over 40 years ago that I was an angelic altar boy. ![[rofl.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7452fcd8e675af869f8da01174474a545b03944.gif "rofl"){kind=small}
Maybe Christian Brothers or Taylor or something like that. Made to be a Communion wine, so decent quality.
![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
Please forgive me if the following resources have been shared previously on this thread:
Story Maps ARC GIS
“The Mission Grape: Tracing the Rise, Fall, and Re-Emergence of the Mission Grape in California”
by Elizabeth Gummer
December 9, 2021
Wine History Project of SLO County
“The Mission Grape: Five Centuries of History in the Americas”
by Libbie Agran
February 25, 2021
Santa Barbara Independent
“First Taste of Rusack’s ‘Boundless’ Mission Grape Wine”
by Matt Kettmann
June 30, 2020
Bon Appetit
“Mission Is My Favorite Do-It-All Food Wine”
February 12, 2021
SF Chronicle
“Mission Revival: State’s First Wine Grape - Circa 1760 - Rides Again”
by Esther Mobley
March 23, 2017
Hanging out in Buenos Aires for a spell. The first wine, from almost 9000’, was fucking sick.
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2019 Agustin Lanus Criolla Chica Sunal Ilógico - Argentina, Salta, Calchaquies (2/20/2022)
Awesome. This grape just loves high altitude and here has atypically acid structure. White plums, leather, strong grape tones. A bit of musky flower and juiciness. Light structure. Calamansi. Really integrated and complete. One of the best Pais/LN/CC I’ve had. (94 pts.)
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2018 Cara Sur Criolla Chica Parcela La Totora - Argentina, San Juan (2/17/2022)
Good vibe here. Light structure. Nice nose with plum and cut flower stems. Good fruit, acids OK. (89 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
Off to Chile in a couple weeks and hopefully get to see those crazy tree-trellised Pais vines!
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Would love to try those, Andrew!
Cara Sur comes to the US. Not sure which wines though.
Anyone tried the Lone Wolf from Scholium Project/LA River Wine Company?
Such a neat story but I’m balking at taking a flyer at $75/pb.
Try not to spend too much money… 
Hanging out at Bouchon. The Pais on trees are amazing and will post pics when I can curate them. Ditto old vineyard.
Learned that Pais has white mutations even on same vines and they pick those separately to make a blanc that tasted wholly different.
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Random fun Pais fact : At the inaugural lunch for the new Chilean pres on Friday, 3 of 6 wines were Pais. That is pretty cool and the producers were buzzing.
And a thirst trap shot for fans.
At my second home - Bocanariz in Santiago - and a new vintage of the Pa-Tel. This wine is in the Miami market, but probably not elsewhere.
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2020 Maturana Wines (José Inácio Maturana) País pa-tel - Chile, Rapel Valley, Colchagua Valley, Paredones (3/14/2022)
Sick good, just a touch below 2019. Sorry, Sebastian.
Loaded up on the same layers of incense and floral and dank plums. A slightly savory streak here, but body is a smidge less rich and integrated. Lovely almost acids and a really lifting finish. Delightful. (93 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
Had a killer morning with Sebastian of Maturana a week ago. Man, I love Chile!
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Holy, moly - never seen a Mission cluster ripen that evenly and darkly here, not even for my late Dec harvest I did a few years back. Which is so interesting because it kind of reinforces the notion that although DNA-wise identical, the North American branch and South American ones are different. I’ve also alway maintained that the SA strands are more peppery - we don’t get that much pepper up here, we get more fruit and strawberry notes.
Tbf, that was a bit of an aberration. I saw a lot of Mission clusters and a lot of the clusters were inconsistent.The tree ones seems more uniform as did the random Mission in Carignan vineyards. (You’d see these berserk vines in the middle of old vine Carignan and be, like… whaat? Then you see these fat clusters all over and be like, yep Pais gotta Pais.) It is like if you actually try to tame it, it rebels. Julio Bouchon does a separate harvest on the tree ones to pick white only grapes for the Pais Salvaje white. I definitely have pics from 100 yr vineyard where they are all over in the same cluster. See below.
I got an education in the Criolla grapes on this trip. Tasted all sorts of stuff straight off the vine. Including a 200 yr old vine that matches nothing known! This whole thing was fucking amazing. I learned of a couple of really remote producers in Argentina with treasure troves of these vines and need to line up a visit nex trip.
Ended up not going hard on Pais the Chile end of trip. Did have some remarkable old vine Carignan and high elevation Grenache and Syrah-blends.
Did get lit with Julio Bouchon late into the night which was a highlight and had the most recent Pais Salvaje.
2021 Pais Salvaje - I think this is the best version I’ve had. Really expressed Pais with a freshness and vivacity. Has the mezcal thing going nicely. Very grape-focused in flavor and solid bead.
2020 Pais Salvaje Blanc - as I noted above, these are actually a distinct harvest. Clusters just never get red. Fermented in an amphora, because … well, duh. I dug this more than another other white Pais I’ve had. Bright acidity and good boy. Has commitment.
Also had a great visit with Garage Wine Co. in Maule. (I’ve never posted on their 2020 215 BC - Before Cabernet - which is quite good.) Had a fun Pais-Cariñena blanco co-ferment. Exception to my Pais fermented white isn’t good rule.
I love Chile. Hopefully back in October. I do have some Sabelli-Frisch waiting for me at home courtesy of BD … but I need to dry out and tasting that might be a spell.
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San Diego State University
“The Largest Grape Vine in the World, Carpenteria, near Santa Barbara, Cal.”
"Carpinteria, misspelled in the title of this card, is south of Santa Barbara and Summerland along the the coast highway. In the picture, a grapevine with a large trunk twists upward to an arbor supporting grapes hanging across the foreground. This is La Vina Grande, one of two giant grapevines that grew south of Santa Barbara, the other an older one in Montecito.
“The publisher’s number is 4193 on the divided back, along with the message ‘Made in Germany.’ The approximate date is 1909.”
Santa Barbara Independent
“Santa Barbara’s Ancient Wines: Then & Now”
by Matt Kettmann
April 5, 2018
“…La Viña Grande: Down the road in Carpinteria, another massive vine was also growing. Planted in 1842 by Joaquina Lugodi Ayala, it was popularized in St. Nicholas magazine due to letters sent by Jack Bailard and Flossie Rasor in 1906. According to an article in the March 1911 edition of Technical World Magazine, the vine could grow more than 10 tons of grapes in a year and may have served as a voting site for Santa Barbara County’s first election. Attempts by the Chicago World’s Fair and the San Francisco Mid-Winter Exposition to buy the vine for display were denied. It was located near the intersection of Via Real and Santa Monica Road and is memorialized in a mural on Linden Avenue…”.
Los Angeles Times
“What to Do with Grapes from 150-year-old Vines at Olvera Street? Make Wine, Of Course”
by S. Irene Virbila
September 18, 2015
"Next time you’re in downtown Los Angeles at Olvera Street and the historic El Pueblo complex, look up. A grapevine seems to float across the top of vendors’ stalls, its tendrils creeping this way and that, leaves healthy and green. The canopy covers almost 400 square feet, filling available space like kudzu. Follow its labyrinthine path over the roof of the Avila Adobe and back down into the newly restored Avila Adobe courtyard. There are actually three grapevines, two there, and one in front of a storefront down the street, each with massive roots that are more like tree trunks.
"These are vines that are possibly older than California itself.
"City Archivist Mike Holland, a home winemaker, has had his eye on the vines for a while, curious about their origin and how old they might be. He’s an avid history buff and shares his obsession with his friend Wes Hagen, a third generation Angeleno and consulting winemaker for J. Wilkes Wines in Santa Maria Valley.
"Last year Holland asked Hagen whom he could contact at UC Davis to get a DNA analysis done on the vines. He referred him to the Foundation Plant Services at UC Davis, which keeps a database of all plant material it analyzes. ‘When I told the lab manager Jerry Dangl that I wanted to get an analysis of three vines on Olvera Street at the old Pueblo site, he offered to do the analysis at no cost,’ says Holland. They sent him a kit. He cut the leaves as requested and sent the whole thing off to the lab.
"…'The three vines are identical to one another and they match what has become known as “Viña Madre”. This is the famous ‘old Mission grape of California’ growing at the San Gabriel Mission. We know from our analysis of samples from San Gabriel that this variety is a first-generation hybrid between a native Southern California grape (Vitis girdiana) and the European grape (Vitis vinifera) variety ‘Mission",’ Dangl wrote in an email. The latter was introduced by the Spanish missionaries in 1769.
"Think about it. Since the Avila Adobe dates from 1818, the vines could possibly be 150 years old — or more.
“‘This is a vine that produced fruit in Los Angeles before wines were commercially made in California,’ says Hagen. ‘Before Napa. Before Sonoma. Before Monterey. Even before Santa Barbara. A vine that is older than the state of California itself. We’re talking about the genesis of New World wine and a vine that represents a link to Junipero Serra, to the Mission era’…".
Wine Berserkers
“Pictures of Pruning the Avila Adobe Vine (1818), first cuts…”
by WesHagen
February 2, 2016
Valley Village View Blog
Text Search: “La Viña Madre”
by Andrew W. Martin
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Really interesting. Thanks. Those old vines are so amazing. There is a similar looking one in the courtyard of Erasmo in Maule. Unknown age. Genetically no match to anything directly but I suspect it is a field cross like the above. Is white grapes.
I wonder how many others like this are scattered up and down the Pacific.
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I heard some chatter about this last month, but nobody clued me into the full picture. (Article taken from Descorchados.)
Inspired by Vigno, Almaule makes its debut this year, the first effort to restore value to the país variety, which, as many of you know, was one of the grapes that arrived with the first Spanish Conquistadors (they called it listán prieto, and, in fact, still do). It was the most important red variety for producing wines in Chile well into the 19th century. After French varieties were imported around 1850, país was slowly relegated to a common wine of little interest and far less quality than that of modern European grapes.
When Vigno began in 2010, carignan was just an exotic grape in the portfolio of a very small handful of Chilean wineries. Today, Almaule begins in very different times. Since the Frenchman Louis Antoine Luyt began his careful work with país in 2007, the variety has received a significant increase in attention, although that interest may still be reserved solely for indie circles and wine connoisseurs. But the concrete fact is that, between the time that Luyt began making país in 2007 (and suffered the ridicule of his Chilean colleagues) and today, the variety’s situation has changed entirely. Large wineries have taken a chance on it, and it has become the battle flag of many small producers in Chile. This year at Descorchados, for example, we have tasted 37 red wines made from país—another record around here.
But back to Almaule. With a grape that’s firmly established in the Chilean varietal panorama, the members of this group seek even greater appreciation for it. “Almaule is another opportunity to bring attention to país, but with very clear and simple rules. The idea is to collaboratively restore dignity to this grape through a cheerful and unpretentious wine with the soul of summer,” says Gillmore winemaker Andrés Sánchez, one of the creators of Almaule.
And speaking of rules, Almaule’s self-imposed restrictions are first and foremost related to the origin and age of the vineyard. The vines must be at least 35 years old and located in the dry-farmed secano sector of the Maule Valley and head-or bush-trained, in accordance with the traditional method inherited from the Spanish. The wine itself must be between 12º and 13º of alcohol with less than five grams of residual sugar per liter (in other words, “dry”) and must contain at least 90% of país in the final blend. Like Vigno, Almaule will also present the collective brand on its front labels and use Burgundy-style bottles with sloping shoulders. Sánchez adds that the idea of the Almaule wines is that they be fresh reds: “the wine to open when the barbecue begins and the one to end it with.” At the close of this edition, the wineries that have joined this new Almaule project are Gillmore, Garage Wine & Co., La Cooperativa Loncomilla, Las Veletas, Erasmo, and J. Bouchon, although several more will likely follow suit in this new way of appreciating país from the Maule Valley.
I am normally not bullish on these schemes, but Vigno has worked really well in both achieving a high standard of quality for Carignan as well as having a penumbra of bringing notice to other versions.
Is this the same producer?