Producer La Mision

CHILE

The Mission was born from an idea of ​​Elena Pantaleoni, already owner of the La Stoppa winery. Elena is very close to Chile, in fact in 1999 her mother moved there, after buying buy a property called Fundo Tomenelo in the Valle del Maule region, about 400 km south from Santiago. 200 hectares of land including an ancient traditional Maule wine cellar, with adobe walls (mud and straw) and a local wooden roof. In 2015 Elena visited the estate and especially the surrounding centenarian vineyards and was fascinated by it. Between the Maule and Bio Bio regions, there are thousands of hectares of very old plants with a free-standing that represent an extraordinary and unique heritage in the world at a wine level. The most common varieties planted are the País, the Carignan and the C insault for the reds, and the Moscatel de Alexandria and the Semillon for the whites. Back in Italy, Elena decides to try making wine in Chile and she contacts Nicola Massa, a dear friend who has worked in the wine industry for many years, with the idea of ​​proposing to make an important and structured wine with the Pais variety. It is generally used for fresher wines and to be drunk immediately. Nicola accepts, and passes the harvest of 2015 in the Maule going around to visit small traditional producers to better understand the way they work. In 2016, together with Elena and Giulio Armani, they select a 100-year-old vineyard with a frank foot, placed on granite soil. They buy an ancient "lagar" (local wooden vat called raulì) for fermentations and renew it, 300 lt barrels used for aging and build a zaranda (the typical structure of colihue canes where they press and de-stem the grapes by hand), all respecting local tradition. In the first year are produced 3300 bottles, and Elena and Nicola, happy with the result obtained plan a long-term project, buying a second lagar and doing some work in the cellar, so as to increase production. Elena and Nicola try to create a link with local farmers and to make this unknown Chile known outside the national borders. Make them aware that what they possess has a great value, unique in the world, that despite the Chilean wine industry tries to keep the prices of their grapes very low, at the limit of survival, in fact there is a market that is attentive to a true craft product , made of ancient wisdom, healthy grapes from over a hundred year old plants and a vinification for centuries unchanged, today called natural.