Maule is a land locked in time. Tucked into the VII region of

Chile, it is 5 hours from the capital - Santiago - and feels at least 50 years away from today. Horses not only plough vineyards, but they are a main source of transport for country folk, as well as large road-battered and dirt-splattered pick-up trucks. The vil-lages and smaller towns are groups of pink-washed mud brick houses with quaint and sleepy plazas and the occasional church still standing proud after too many powerful earthquakes in recent memory.

Agriculture is the main breadwinner in Maule, and you’ll find artisanal crafts and homemade breads and foods being sold, and prepared, along the roadsides. A delicious whiff of smoke often accompanies the air during the lazy hours of lunch. It’s a humble trading community in Maule, but a defiant one with plenty of char-acter.

Locals still giggle at their parochial saying, ‘Talca, Paris, London’, which became the neighbourhood joke since a local hat maker tried to aggran-dise his business by falsely stating he had shops in each capital. While Talca is a far cry from any cosmopolitan city like London or Paris, the phrase almost perfectly sums up the locals’ tongue-in-cheek humour and undeni-able affection for their own country capital and way of life.

As with most of Chile’s wine regions, Maule is framed by the coast on the West and the mountains to the East. The vigorous Humboldt current cre-ates large swells and the coastline is rugged and untamed. Moving inland are the middle valleys with small hillsides, fruit plantations and many old vineyards. The long Maule river snakes through the valley offering a handful of water sports and a lifeline to all the growers. Forests and lakes sit somewhere in-between guarding old legends and legacies of the native tribes, and up to the Andes mountains the horizon changes to volcanos and snowcapped mountains where the Altos del Lircay national park is alongside a handful of ski resorts and hot springs.

Maule is wild, largely undiscovered, and rich with culture and history.

Top left - bottom left: Walking the vines &

chewing the seeds; Talca-Paris-London;

Harvest time. Top right: Local artisans.

THE VINES & WINES:

Although it might not be the best known, Maule is one of the biggest wine producing regions in Chile. Its great diversity of varieties often don’t even get a mention on the wine label as traditionally this has been the heartland of anonymous wines sold as bulk or table plonk. VIGNO (Vignadores de Carignan) is a movement that has helped change that - putting Maule on the map.

With 17 member wineries or producers, making one VIGNO wine each, enthusiasts claim that VIGNO is the first real appellation of Chile, and there may well be reason to their rhyme as the rules of VIGNO are very similar in specificity to those of a traditional European appellation:

a minimum of 65% Carignan (only to be blended with other red old-vine varieties from Maule); using vines over 30 years old (or grafted onto old rootstock);

CHILE

4.2 millionHectolitres/year

MAULE

CHILE TOTAL

MAULE =50,574 hectares

2016

Mediterranean Climate

Sub regions Loncomilla Cauquenes Tutuvén

Summer avg. 25º C 8º C 6 mm Total rain 735 mm/year

Winter avg. 8º C 1º C 110 mm

HarvestMarch - May

35.4º Latitude

Soil Pro�les

GRANITE CLAY LOAM

170 producers5,390 vineyards

$24 USDArg. price per bottleof VIGNO

12.8 millionhectolitres/

year6th largestproducer in

the worldMain Varieties

23% 19% 18% 11% 10% 7% 7% 8%

Pais

Cab

erne

t S

auvi

gnon

Car

men

ere

Mer

lot

Sau

vign

on B

lanc

Car

igna

n

Cha

rdon

nay

Oth

ers

30-100YRS Age of vines

0 1600s

Viticulture History

28 %

23

vineyards must be dry farmed; vineyards must be hand harvested (the only mechanics permitted are the sturdy wheels of a horse-drawn cart;and wines must be aged over 2 years before sale.

The characteristics of VIGNO show you exactly what is special about Maule. Maule has beautiful old vine-yards of varieties such as Carignan and Pais, whose root systems are so deep that many of the vineyards (known as Secano) can be completely dry farmed (with no additional irrigation beyond the rain). This is quite unique in the viticulture world, and is a real gem in Chile where many of most famous wine regions are pioneering new regions barely in their teens.

So what does the wine taste like? Well, with 17 different wines in VIGNO there is of course some diversity within producer styles. Although there is a family line in VIGNO, and that is the old vine Carignan. The variety was originally planted in Maule in the 40s as a government in i t ia t ive after a devastating earthquake in 1939 that killed 28,000 people. Agriculture needed to be boosted to overcome the local crisis, and so Carignan was planted all over Maule to compliment the Pais (Mission or Criolla) grape which was widespread, but a bit paltry in profile. Carignan to the contrary was big - with lots of colour, tannins and a powerful acidity. It was too rustic to drink on its own, but added a much needed backbone to the Pais wines.

Food Pairings

CARIGNAN 9º-13ºC

ALC% 12-14

PRODUCER INTERVIEW MARCELO RETAMAL, DE MARTINO

Marcelo Retamal has been the long-serving winemaker for De Martino winery since 1996. While the winery is based in Maipo, they make many wines in Maule - including a VIGNO Carignan blend. Retamal was one of the founding members of VIGNO, and is a great believer in the renaissance of old vines in Southern Chile.

Can you tell me about how VIGNO started?

It started as an informal ‘carignan club’. It was just a group of guys who liked making Carignan and would meet up to talk about it and share information about working with the old vines in Maule. Slowly we began to form the concept of VIGNO as a way to preserve the quality and character of old vine Carignan from the region. VIGNO is that it is more than a DO (geographic indicator), I think this is the first of the future DOCs of Chile.

One of the most incredible aspects of this story is the social one. Maule is a very special and very old valley for Chile, and we need to rescue our old vines - it is not good that nowadays these old vines are being made into box wine or are being ripped up! Because of VIGNO the cost of grapes has gone up dramatically, and now a vine that local people were thinking of pulling out of the ground is suddenly worth something.

Why did Chile begin to lose their old vines, like in Maule?

During Pinochet’s government they put down a law to pay big companies to put pine trees in this area to make paper. So people ripped out the old vines for pine. This is stupid because wine was part of the culture of the people - it is not only grapes and business! The loss of old vines was

also a loss of wine tradition in Chile.

You are trying to bring back some traditional winemaking techniques from Chile like using old clay amphorae for example. Why did you make the shift?

If you try the wine from Chile be-fore the 90s, it was totally different than today. It was harvested earlier and might be considered ‘green’ for the standards today. Then I think at the end of the 90s some flying winemakers arrived to Chile and said ‘your wine is green - we need ripe tannin and ripe fruit’. And so we all started to produce this sort of wine that was really oaky, very sweet and high in alcohol.

But then around 2007 I started to have a problem… me and the owner didn’t like our wines! We couldn’t drink more than a glass! We wanted to make a wine with more drinkability and more fruit. So we stared to work strong-ly in that direction. In our entry lines now we use zero oak, and in our other wines we use big 5000 litre tunnels like they used to here, and old tinajas (clay amphora). We work a lot with the tinajas because we believe the old tinajas are the future. More than about finding new things, it is about rediscovering the old ways.

It seems almost like a full circle! With regards to winemaking, and also in terms of Chile returning to its old roots.

I think that today one of the best things happening in Chile is that we are rediscovering our old bush vines… But Chile is also an explosion of new regions! There is a lot to discover and our wine production is rapidly changing. It’s an exciting time for Chile.

Watch the full video interview here

TRAVEL GUIDEHOW TO GET THEREMaule is a 5 hour journey from Santiago, Chile, by road. You can easily hire a car and the journey is quite direct straight down the Ruta 5, although the wine routes require a bit more patience and good GPS. Alternatively catch a bus to Talca, and a taxi from there to your final destination. To reach Santiago, United Airlines offer flights from major US airports. Santiago is a 16 hour flight from London, 10 hours from New York, and 5 hours from Sao Paulo. www.united.com

WHERE TO STAYTo stay in the wine region, try the Tabonko hotel at Gillmore winery. Another producer of fine Carignan, the boutique hotel also offers wine therapy in its spa. www.tabonko.cl Nearby is also the guest house at J Bouchon, a historic family home overlooking the vineyards and a neat garden where one giant wine barrel has been transformed into a hot tub - perfect for an evening of star gazing while sipping a red Maule blend. www.jbouchon.com

WHERE TO EATMaule is filled with low key, locals eateries but if you want a bit of haute cuisine Cocina y Gastronomia en San Bonifacio in Chanco and Terra Costa in Constitucion are top picks. Maule is filled with low key, locals eateries but if you want a bit of haute cuisine Cocina y Gastronomia en San Bonifacio in Chanco and Terra Costa in Constitucion are top picks.

BUDGET & PLANNINGOn a small budget you need to plan approx. $60-90USD per couple a day, for a more lavish budget you can plan on spending upwards of $350USD a day on accommodation and meals. Currency: Chilean PesoLanguage: SpanishVisa Requirements: Free for most nationalities (on arrival), Australia and Mexico have to reciprocity fee (on arrival).

Matt Wilson is a British photographer who moved to Chile’s wine regions after marrying his wife, a Chilean winemaker ten years ago. With a background in skateboarding and music photography, he always brings a lively dimension to wine photography and his personal philosophy is that “no wine photo should ever have a glass of wine in it!” www.mattwilson.cl Photos_in_Chile matt.wilson_gc

Through the lens of Featured photographer: Matt Wilson

But Maule became devalued and abandoned as an important wine region for Chile, and the focus shifted to other areas. The Carignan vines were left brooding in the lost hillsides of Maule and neglected for almost half a century. Over time the vines began to fend for themselves, reaching their own water sources deep in the ground and ageing more gracefully than anyone imagined. When winemakers started to explore once again down south, they discovered that the historically abandoned vines of Carignan had matured taming its once-challenging fruit into sophistication and balance, yet maintaining that wild streak that keeps people interested.

Almost all the wines are made from grapes purchased from very small producers around Maule, small to the extent whereby they may count their land by number of vines owned rather than hectares.

The similar providence and conditions for the grapes means that all the VIGNO wines share in the true character of Maule Carignan: a bright red fruit nose, with wild floral and herbal notes often underpinned by more rustic earthy notes, matched with a bracing acidity and tannin backbone. While originally planted as a support role for Pais wine, Maule’s Carignan now walks on its own two legs and provides one of the most interesting wine varieties to taste out of Chile.