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Wine Tasting Adventure

2022 Clos des Fous, `Pour Ma Gueule` Itata Valley - Liberty

£13.49 GBP
£13.49 GBP

A midnight tasting in Chile in 2011 was our first encounter with the ‘Fous’ (‘crazy men’) when Alberto Antonini introduced us to Pedro Parra, with whom he works closely at several of South America’s top estates. Pedro now makes wines under his own label but was originally one of the four ‘Fous’, alongside winemakers François Massoc and Paco Leyton, as well as Albert Cussen who looks after the business. The name ‘Clos des Fous’ is an ode to the 12 years Pedro and François spent studying and working in Burgundy, as well as to what their peers describe as their ‘craziness’ in crossing the traditional Chilean vineyard boundaries to source grapes from more extreme conditions further south and east.

The Chardonnay ‘Locura 1’ is sourced from the region of Malleco, one of the southernmost wine-growing sub-regions in Chile. Although once considered too southerly for winemaking, the cold conditions and sandy and rocky soils have increasingly attracted top producers looking to make expressive, cool-climate wines with steely acidity.

The Cabernet Sauvignon is sourced from a single vineyard called ‘Grillos Cantores’ (or ‘singing crickets’) in the Alto Cachapoal, just six kilometres from the Andes mountains. The decaying granite and volcanic rocks present in the soil here provide the resulting wine with a distinct mineral character, soft tannins and good levels of balancing acidity. Perhaps their most original wines are the red blends: ‘Cauquenina’ and ‘Pour Ma Gueule’ (meaning ‘for my gob’). These blends change from vintage to vintage and include varying amounts of Carignan, Malbec, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cinsault, Carmenère and País to achieve a complex, fluid, modern red blend. ‘Cauquenina’ has some degree of oak influence with 20% of the blend going into new oak, whereas ‘Pour Ma Gueule’ has no new oak influence and is meant for drinking young.

The name is a French expression "for my gob", a term used to describe a stash of wine for the producer to drink with friends and family. The grapes for Pour Ma Gueule are sourced largely from Itata Valley located 400 km south of Santiago. This is a cool, wet region without coastal mountain protection and with fewer hours of sunshine, which gives elegance to the wines. All the vineyards are very small and measure between two and six hectares. The soil is paleozoic with a small amount of quartz.

The 2022 vintage in the Itata Valley presented notably challenging weather. An exceptionally dry winter brought precipitation levels approximately 90% below the region's average, placing significant stress on the vines as soil moisture reserves remained depleted. The icy winter was followed by a cool spring that delayed initial vine growth and flowering, with fruit set occurring gradually under moderate temperatures. As summer progressed, temperatures began to rise in January, moderating the extended coolness of the earlier season and helping to accelerate ripening across the valley. February brought continued warming that finally allowed the grapes to achieve full maturity, resulting in smaller yields but concentrated fruit quality on the surviving vines, particularly among the region's distinctive old-vine plantings of País and Carignan.

Each of the varieties used in this blend were hand harvested, vinified and aged separately. After crushing, the musts were fermented in concrete vats, with malolactic fermentation taking place in tank and old barrels for 12 months. Once finished, the wines were blended together, making a unique and distinctive wine.

`Pour Ma Gueule` is dark ruby in colour with violet highlights. This blend has aromas of tobacco, rose petals, mint, eucalyptus and juicy red apple on the nose. The palate is fruit forward with fresh raspberry, strawberry, and caramel apple notes leading to a finish of dark chocolate.