Tweet your perfect platter to win a case of Garage Wine Co.
A nod to Bordeaux’s garagistes, Garage Wine Co. is an antidote to the big, established brands that dominate the Chilean wine market. Canadian Derek Mossman Knapp started the company with the idea of making premium Chilean wine on a small scale, by hand with his family.
His initial customer base of friends and family soon grew, with an increasing number of individuals and restaurants clamouring for his bold and beautiful wines. But despite growing in size, Garage Wine Co. has always stuck firmly to its handmade ethos, using only native yeasts and letting the wine develop naturally with minimal intervention. As Derek says “we are opposed to manipulation and have learned to guide the wines through their natural process. To our way of thinking, the wines personalities’ are well defined on the vine”.
Garage Wine Co. is acclaimed for its full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Carignan grown by farmers in the mountainous Maule region. These dry-farmed old vines are a national treasure that, until Derek discovered them, were never given the attention they deserved.
The Ploughmen Project
Devastatingly, it is precisely this area of Chile that was shaken hard by the earthquake of 2010. But with the help of a bursary from The Vintner’s Company ‘Geoffrey Roberts’ Award, Derek worked closely with these small ploughmen farmers to get them growing again.
‘The Ploughmen Project’ not only helped repair damaged vineyards and wineries, but encouraged the farmers to re-focus their efforts from getting a maximum of bulk wine from their land, to making premium old-vine Carignan with a real sense of place. As Derek puts it “I believe many who live with very little, and now have much less, would be better served to develop their fruit into something the higher-end modern wine industry needs, instead of a commodity where they will always be slowly losing out against the powers of the market economy.”
The perfect platter wine – your chance to win!
The robust concentration and old-vine complexity of these wines make them a great match for the intense flavours of charcuterie, cheeses and pickles. In other words, the perfect platter wine. We’re offering you the chance to win six bottles of Garage Wine Co. if you tweet @WalkerWodehouse a picture of your ‘perfect platter’ along with a bottle of Garage. A great excuse to crack open a bottle and get creative!
Come and meet the man himself
We are pleased to welcome Derek Mossman Knapp to the UK for our tastings on 5 and 6 September in London and Bristol, so do come and say hello.