Pisador, 2018

Elena Pantaleoni is strongly related with Chile because her mother has been living here for more than twenty years. In the late ninteis Elena’s mother bought a very nice property with an old and beautiful cellar called Fundo Tomenelo in the south of Maule Valley Region, close to Cauquenes village. During an early 2015 holiday trip visiting her mother, Elena had the chance to visit some of the amazing terroirs and centenary vineyards between Maule region and Bio Bio. There are thousands of hectares of very old (100-300 years) and not grafted plants, an amazing and unique world wine heritage. The most common variety planted are país, carignan, cisnault for the reds, moscatel de Alexandria and semillion for the whites. Soon after her trip Elena went to Nicola Massa, a very good friend in the wine business from many years, with the idea of making a wine with país variety. País is the oldest variety imported in Chile, middle 1500, from the Spanish missionaries. Nicola was gratified and honored by Elena’s proposal of course and agreed with her to start the project. Therefore Nicola spent part of 2015 in Maule going around visiting old producers and lands to understand better the way they work. And in 2016 they selected a very good and representative vineyard (granitic soil) with amazing centenary plants (not grafted, no irrigation, bush vines) close to Elena’s mother property, bought an old ‘lagar’ (wood tub) for fermentations and renewed it, some old barrels and built a zaranda (this is the typical wood destemmer where we work the grapes by hand). Very simple respecting the local tradition. The different idea from me and Elena was trying to make an important and structured wine with this variety. They selected wonderful grapes, pressed it by foot before (from here the name of the wine Pisador, pisar in Spanish means press by feet) and then again pressed by hand and destemmed on zaranda over the lagar. Spontaneous fermentation of course and a long maceration, about 25/30 days. Also the idea of making Pisador was born to make a connection with local farmers. The very big chilean wine industry try to keep prices of the grapes very low and farmers are often forced to undergo to these conditions and at the end they are forced to abandon the vineyards because there is no profit. Elena and Nicola pays the grapes considerably much higher than the average to help local farmers to not loose or abandon their lands. Nowadays Agricola La Misión has two more labels coming out on the market: a white Moscatel de Alejandria from 80 years old dry farm ungrafted vines and Tierras de Tomenelo, a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from vines’s property estate Tomenelo, both made with same standards as País Pisador.

Want to learn more? Read RAW WINE's exclusive interview with Elena of Agricola La Misión, for insights into their background, philosophy and approach.