Tasting: Watermelon juice on the pallet, tangerine on the nose.
Grape: Pais
Region: Bio Bio Valley, Chile
Vinification: The name Chacoli is a reference to the process in which the wine is made, very much like the Txakolis of old in the Basque Country. Made similarly to the Gutiflower Petnat, this is a Rosé of Pais dry farmed and grown organically. It is hand harvested, destemmed, skin macerated for 1 day (for color) then the free run juice is transferred into fiber glass tanks using gravity where it remains for 2 months before being bottled without filtering, fining, disgorging, or sulfur.
About the Winemaker:
Manuel Moraga Gutierrez is the owner and winemaker of Cacique Maravilla, a winery focused on traditional and non-interventionist Chilean wines in Yumbel in the Bio-Bio Valley of Chile’s Southern Regions. Manuel is the seventh generation of the Gutierrez family to call Yumbel home, and at least the fourth generation to tend vines. His great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Francisco Gutierrez Gutierrez, arrived in Chile in 1750 from the Canary Islands in search of gold and eventually amassed enough treasure to acquire land in Yumbel, some of which has remained in the family and is still owned by Manuel Moraga today. Francisco Gutierrez earned the respect of the local indigenous Mapuche people and was given the nickname ‘Cacique Maravilla’ (roughly translating to ‘Magnificent Chief’).