Flaherty Wines

We were in Cauquenes over a long weekend recently, checking on the new vineyard planting. Over the winter, we cleared two and a half hectares and planted just under one and half. The original idea was to plant all the cleared area, but the nursery that was going to supply a large share of our plants discovered that they had nematodes. It was a setback to have to scramble around for plants at the last minute, but it is very good that they found that out before they delivered our plants, rather than after. Nematodes are tiny, worm-like insects that feed on the vine’s roots. Believe me, you don’t want them in your vineyard. Note that nematodes are not the same as phyloxera, which also feeds on roots. Phyloxera is actually a true insect: the larvae feed on the roots, whereas the adults are aphid-like and feed on the leaves. Chile does not have phyloxera, so we are able to plant own-rooted (that is, ungrafted) vines. We’re the only country in the world that still does that, so we are very cautious about avoiding the introduction of phyloxera.

Our original plan included planting two different clones of tempranillo—one from cuttings of our Aconcagua vineyard and the other from the now-quarantined nursery. The plants grown from our own cuttings were fine, as they were rooted by a local nursery, so we were able to plant roughly half the tempranillo originally calculated. We also were able to find syrah and petit syrah to round out the planting. The total came to 10,317 plants, which breaks down as follows: 4,377 tempranillo, 3,490 syrah, and 2,450 petite sirah. The vines are planted at a fairly high density of 1.2 meters by 1.2 meters, and they will be head pruned and dry farmed once established.

Finally, we decided to postpone grafting over the pais (or mission) to carignan, since we don’t have a good water source. By next year, we’ll have either a well or (more probably) a reservoir, so we’ll do the grafting then. Our caretaker will appreciate having grapes to make chicha for one more year.