Vino Las Fermentadas, "La Sangrada" 2021

Alice L’Estrange, by way of Australia, today finds herself in Guarilihue, a town in Southern Chile’s Itata Valley. Once an importer, she is today a winemaker at the vanguard, combining a driving passion for sustainability across all aspects of wine life, that is, beyond the environmental & oenological practices. In a manner akin to Claudio Sepulveda’s “Anarko” project whereby his négociant business supplies small-scale farmers of heirloom bush-vines in southern Chile with the proper amount of $ merited from the fruit of their labor (thereby saving the vineyards from being ripped up & replaced by Eucalyptus trees meanwhile also undercutting the wine conglomerates of the region that have long fleeced these small-scale artisan farmers), Alice purchases fruit from growers of seemingly hidden, historic vines. Beyond this, she also ensures sustainability & collectivism throughout the process of bottling: re-purposed glass is sourced for her range, recyclable sugar cane corks are used to cap her bottles, and local artists & friends are commissioned for the labels that adorn these wines. It is all in an endeavor to support the small farmers from whom she can purchase fruit and provide them with a good wage. And this is only describing her own eponymous wines – what we have in the share is from her side-project focused on women-grown, women-cultivated wines with an eye toward grape-growing & winemaking education, entitled “Las Fermentadas.” The attitudes toward farming and cellar work are the same across both projects – and the results are astounding. The adjective would be “pure” if it weren’t so meager in the face of what these wines actually are. Downright delicious & real.

Itata, Chile. 100% País, hand-harvested from heirloom, dry-farmed vines. The grapes go into steel tanks in whole bunches, where Alice collects the free-run juice. After a light press, the wine is racked and fermented with wild yeasts. Unfined, unfiltered, no SO2.