As you go down the wine road, you will continue to find stories that are more obscure and more unique. That doesn’t always mean ‘great’ from a wine perspective, but it certainly can as it did here. One has to marvel at the story of Pedro Parra, a minuscule producer in an obscure part of southern Chile who has become something of a cult hero based on his terroir-driven work with, of all things, Cinsault. Truth be told, these are two of the most impressive efforts with Cinsault we have ever run across, though admittedly the book of ‘great Cinsault’ is more of a pamphlet. His international reputation is pretty amazing as well considering he only makes about 100 cases of the two wines we are featuring today.
It all starts in the certainly-not-mainstream areas of Itata and Bio Bio about 500 kilometers south of Concepcion near the ocean. Pedro was born in this area and has returned here to live and create some waves in this obscure corner of Chile. One of Parra’s consistent quotes is, “You cannot grow terroir.” Terroir is a facilitator and Pedro, a specialist in the field, is particularly taken with the various forms of granite and schist here.
This is an area ‘lost in time.’ A difficult place to visit for centuries, with no roads, steep slopes, rain, and forest, that constant isolation was responsible for a strong local commitment to viticulture and wine. It was totally disconnected with the modern wine evolution that happened in Chile over the last 40 years. This isolation is the key factor for this terroir. No Bordeaux varieties invaded and no high yield production with irrigation was installed. That kept the area pure, pristine, and unique.
The two varieties most widely planted in Itata are Cinsault (45-70-year-old vines) and País (60 to 120-year-old vines). Pedro’s showcase wines, named for jazz musicians because they are ‘complex and innovative, are single-vineyard Cinsaults. For space reasons, we’ll defer to Wine Advocate reviews from Luis Gutierrez which cover technical notes as well.
The 2018 Pedro Parra y Familia Monk is “…another single-vineyard Cinsault, the 2018 Monk is also named after a jazz musician, Thelonius Monk…All of these wines had a native fermentation with some 30% full clusters, and in this case, the élevage was in 1,500-liter oak vats for just under one year. To me, this is the most complete of the three single-vineyard bottlings, and in a way, I see some similitude with the Imaginador bottling. It’s also the most elegant and mineral as well as serious, balanced, terribly precise and long. 1,170 bottles were filled in March 2019…94+ points.”
Pedro Parra considers John Coltrane an innovator and creative jazz musician, after whom he named the 2018 Pedro Parra y Familia Trane, a single-vineyard Cinsault from a plot of highly decomposed granite soils. It fermented in concrete with indigenous yeasts and some 30% full clusters and matured in 1,500-liter oak vats for 11 months. It’s extremely chalky and perhaps a little rounder and gentler compared with its siblings. It has a little more concentration and clout, but at the same time, it doesn’t reach the elegance of the other two. There are some similitudes here, because they all come from granite soils that mark all of the wines very much. 1,188 (bottles) were filled in March 2019…93 points.”
Conceptually these are a bit of a walk on the wild side. But they are delicious, distinctive, extremely rare one-of-kind efforts that merit attention. We’ve certainly never seen Cinsault with this kind of flair. Geek alert.