Muscat de Alexandria & País, Itata, Chile 

An aromatic, wild orange from Chile’s southernmost winemaking region. In Ontario for the very first time, welcome Strange Grapes! Originally from Australia, Alice L’Estrange’s passion and tenderness towards the Chilean land can be tasted in each and every low-intervention cuvée. From VERY old (100+ years), ungrafted bush vines, the harvest is destemmed using a zaranda, a bound mat of local bamboo that is rested on top of a wine vessel, and used to separate stems from grapes by pushing the clusters across the mat by hand. Part of the intensely bouquet-ed muscat spent two months on skins, the rest spent a year(!) on skins in ancient tinaja (traditional Chilean earthen clay vessel) with a small amount of animalistic país, chasing its tail until the wait was finally over, target acquired. Your garden runneth over with honeysuckle, salt water sheen, biggest cheese grater side tannins (in a very good way), aromatic melon, rose water & a new twig tannin. Enjoy with a Chacarero Chileno, aka Chilean steak and green bean sandwiches!