Caliterra

Winemaker Comment

This season our vineyard in general had lower than average temperatures which in turn allowed us to especially highlight the fruit characteristics of our wines.
In our Merlot plantations, we have continued our labor focused on the roots of the vine, obtaining very interesting results in terms of fruit ripeness.
The wines are very fruity, with a predominance of cherries and plums in the nose, while in the mouth, the tannins have had a tendency to become softer and smoother. When the time comes to combine with the previous harvest, more or less at the beginning of 2011, it will be very pleasant in spite of its youth.

Vintage Note

Our vineyards were worked in sectors, which is an approach to our vineyard that consists of rationally separating the different plots according to the variance in heterogeneity generated by the diversity in the soils. We use the latest technology and multispectral images to determine the state of maturity on a plant by plant basis and then harvest uniform sectors of fruit that are taken to the cellar and begin their own route to the bottle rather than being mixed into a mass of grapes of varying degrees of ripeness. This requires a very close degree of separation of sub-lots, such as occurs naturally the variations of the soil beneath the plants.

We worked very carefully with the roots of the vines this season and will continue to do so because root systems need time to adjust. We have also begun to harvest a bit earlier, although keeping in tune with what we taste in the grapes from this varietal. The fruit is ripening a bit earlier than in the past, which helps us create wines that are fresher and a slightly lower alcohol level.

Fermentation and Aging

As has become habitual each season, once again working the vineyard in a polygon manner was crucial during this season. This consists of rationally separating the heterogeneity within the different blocks; differences that were generated by the diversity found in the soils. Using state of the art technology with multispectral images, we were able to differentiate the level of ripeness from plant to plant in order to be able to separately take uniform fruit polygons to the storage facility. This marks the beginning of an individual path towards the bottle that is not accompanied by a mass of grapes with different degrees of ripeness. This implicates a certain degree of separation of the sub-batches that rigorously adheres to how the variation of soils underneath the plants naturally occurs.
During this harvest in particular, we have had to ever-so-carefully manage the fruit since due to the fact that this season had a delay in ripening, the precise selection of ripeness for each batch allowed us to obtain wines with superb fruit expression along with proper roundness in the mouth and an excellent balance of freshness.
Fermentation was performed in stainless steel tanks at initial temperatures of 30° Celsius that were reduced afterwards to 26º Celsius so as to avoid over extraction of the skins. The wine was aged in oak barrels for 10 months during which time the malolactic fermentation took place.