Get To Know Santiago Achaval - Winemaking Frontiers
Por Santiago Achaval
Extreme-altitude terroirs call for unique winemaking approaches. The art of our enology is to create wines that express the distinctive character of the grapes from La Finca de los Viñedos Imposibles, with minimal intervention, resulting in fresh, elegant, and vibrant wines.
When we came across the project, La Finca de los Viñedos Imposibles sparked great interest in my partner Roberto Cipresso and me. We were convinced of the terroir’s potential and excited about the challenge of creating legendary wines.
Orientation? Complex pre-Andean soils? Thermal amplitude? Luminosity? Extreme altitude? None of these factors alone explain the unique phenomenon of the Pucara Valley: a terroir that naturally resolves the tension between character and finesse in an extreme-altitude wine.
The truth is that managing extreme-altitude grapes requires significant agronomic and enological experimentation. We adjusted the lessons learned from managing vineyards in different terroirs around the world: Mendoza, Napa, France, Mallorca. We studied each type of soil on the estate, defined the varietals and vine clones we believed would perform best at extreme altitude. It was an exercise of much trial and error, both in the vineyards and in the winery.
In the winery we aimed for minimalist intervention, with prolonged macerations, multiple pump-overs, and a selection of French oak barrels that would highlight the fruit. In each wine, we sought to express the particular characteristics of the different micro-terroirs, achieving complex fruit, intense colors, and deep aromas that highlighted the distinctive floral and graphite notes.
Did we arrive? I like to think that at La Finca de los Viñedos Imposibles, there is no finish line because we move the goalposts every year.
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