Vino Potable

In both its natural and cultural blessings, Itata stands alone in how incredibly well-suited it is for making fresh, nuanced, low-intervention wine. Where the overwhelming majority of grapevines worldwide are tired clones that must necessarily be grafted onto genetically engineered rootstocks in order to survive the pest known as Phylloxera, here Vitis vinifera grows wild in forests. And where these tired clones then need appalling amounts of chemical sprays, in Itata five centuries’ of adaptation to local conditions mean very few inputs are needed to yield astonishingly healthy fruit.

Behind these vines, though, are Itata’s real treasure: the generations of farmers that have planted and nurtured the countryside, the stewards of some of the most genetically diverse and well-adapted vineyards on the planet. That said, many of these world treasures are under threat: the ghosts of Latin America’s colonial past are today incarnate by megacorporations who pay far below cost to proud Chileans who refuse to abandon hundreds of years of family heritage. And where these families might otherwise be seduced by the returns that converting their vineyards to monoculture plantations of pine or eucalyptus represent, Vino Potable instead pays farmers far above market rate for the sustainability of the community and, in turn, the prosperity and elevation of Itata tradition.

In the cellar, the centuries-old family vineyards are respected with utmost care. All winemaking is extremely physical: hand destemming across wooden zarandas, open-top lagar fermentations, and traditional basket pressing. Fermentations are 100% native via ambient yeasts. Finally, wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered with a homeopathic amount of sulfur at bottling.