Bodegas VidAs “Cien Montañas” Carrasquin 2015

2015 Cien Montañas Carrasquín

Monovarietal from Carrasquín, made in a traditional way, selecting and treading the best bunches.

Manual harvest in 15 kg boxes, fermented in 300 l barrels. open vertically, grapes without destemming or crushing, start of fermentation with native yeast, pasta stirred with traditional method twice a day, duration of alcoholic fermentation.

Carrasquín is a variety of vine destined to the production of indigenous and unique wine from the Cangas PDO wine-growing area.

Winemaking: Aged in a used, 3,000 liter French foudre for one year. Bottled with low SO2.

Production: Only 1,200 bottles!

Background: Visiting Siete Vidas is like traveling to the middle ages. Similar in many ways to Galicia, but more remote, Asturias is green and wet, with stone hovels and wood smoke always in the air. Cangas del Narcea and the surrounding areas were important viticulturally from the 11th century until 1950, when coal mining abruptly stopped cultivation, dropping from 3 million kilos of grapes per year to its current 100,000. Cangas native Beatriz Pérez is working to revive local wine culture. She cares for many of the few remaining plots of vines, entrusted to her by older locals, too old to tend them on their own, and is also planting new vineyards. She is on a quest to show what Cangas can do!

Soils/Climate: Extreme viticulture in every way: rocky, slate soils which slip under your feet, steep slopes with as much as 75% grades, warm and wet in the summer, snow in the winter. One of three regions the government has designated as being of “heroic viticulture”, owing to the difficulty of grape cultivation. Vidas’ reds come from 30-60 year old vines in the Cangas and surrounding subregions, which are cooler and have lighter slate soils.

Viticulture: Organic in practice, although every few years one or two of the plots may need non-organic spraying to save a crop.

Winemaking: Stainless fermented and aged. Low SO2.