"El País de Quenehuao"

100% País. Back in 2008, Louis Antoine Luyt visited this special hillside vineyard, called Quenehuao (pronounced kenny-wow and translated from the native Mapudungun language to lieu frais or "cool place") and farmed by the Gardeweg family, in the Maule region with his mentor Marcel Lapierre. They returned to it several times and concluded that it had the potential to yield a uniquely expressive País wine. The vines are planted on red clay soils rich in iron and decomposed granite and are organically farmed and not irrigated. They are harvested by hand. The whole bunches go through a carbonic maceration without any sulfur or yeast additions for ten days in stainless steel tanks. The wine is aged for a year in steel and bottled with a light, non-sterile filtration and a miniscule amount of sulfur. The Luyt-Lapierre bond remains tight: the Quenehuao is listed on the Domaine Lapierre website under "our wines".