Pedro Parra Vinista Pais 2020

"Atomic" says Pedro Parra of this wine. "It's all from the terroir." We're talking about 100-year-old País here, sourced from different sites on basalt and granite soils in the Ñipas and Guarilihue sub-zones. Sweet, scented and layered, it's a wine that's very Pinot Noir- like in perfume, flavour and structure, with spices fro 50% whole bunches and floral wild strawberry and pomegranate fruit.

A new village red produced with País grapes from different vineyards in Portezuelo (Itata), the 2018 Vinista comes from extremely old, dry-farmed vines on granite soils rich in quartz and was cropped from a dry vintage. They used 30% full clusters in the fermentation with indigenous yeasts, and it matured in 5,000-liter oak vats and 3,000-liter concrete vats for 10 to 11 months. His initial idea was to focus on Cinsault, but as he learned more about País, he decided he was ready to make his first varietal País wine. In this first vintage, he harvested before two big storms to avoid botrytis—because the País bunches often touch the ground, rain during harvest is very dangerous for the variety. This is varietal, clean and expressive. The biggest surprise is the softness of the tannins, and Parra thinks this is due to the good terroir—for País, the terroir must have good drainage and no clay. The truth is this wine is surprisingly elegant but doesn't have great complexity. 6,526 bottles were filled in March 2019.