Garage Wine Co.

Owners: Pilar Miranda A., Derek Mossman K., Doc Alvaro Peña, Ernesto Muller
Chief Winemaker: Pilar Miranda
Website: Garagewine.company
Commercial Contact: derek@garagewineco.cl


History
Garage Wine Co. is known for working with small farmers, the custodians of the old vines, on the Coastal Range in the Maule. Some claim its wines are special due to a storied past when they worked around the challenges of being small, for example welding their own open tanks when no one would make what they wanted. These obstacles turned the cellar into an agile firm that makes precisely the wines they want to make on their own terms.

Others believe the wines are what they are due to its work with regenerative farming in reviving old vineyards and revitalising the soil, injecting life into the vines and wines. Their cellar hands think the determining factor has more to do with incessant experimentation: dozens of trials separating smaller bits to compare and contrast. The trials led to a series of small decisions that built on themselves year after year. In the end, their sustained curiosity and perseverance in experimentation has generated small incremental improvements.

But technical reasons alone are not what make Garage Garage. It is not enough to pick the fruit precisely on the right day, or ferment it with precisely the right amount of raspon, nor even to find precisely the right section of the vineyard where the cracks in the decomposed granite allow the roots to drink deeply…

Garage wines are different because the cellar invested where others chose to reduce costs, mostly in labour and in time spent learning and training. The resulting discretionary effort released by their people—so much greater than the savings if they had chosen to save on labour—was essential, and the dividend is expressed in quality. Garage is Garage because sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

Vineyards
Truquilemu Vineyard, D.O. Empedrado, Maule: Planted in 1910. Dry-farmed Carignan and Syrah on decomposed granite from the Coastal Range, where the roots delve into deep cracks.

Las Higueras Vineyard, D.O. Loncomilla, Maule: Planted in 1900. Cabernet Franc on alluvial soil on the third terrace of the Achibueno River.

Renacido Vineyard, D.O. Cauquenes, Maule: Over 150-year-old roots. Dry-farmed Cabernet Sauvignon on decomposed granite from the Coastal Range.

Sauzal Vineyard, D.O. Empedrado, Maule: Over 100-year-old roots. Dry-farmed Grenache, Carignan, and Monastrell on decomposed granite from the Coastal Range.

Bagual Vineyard, Caliboro, Maule: Over 100-year-old roots. Dry-farmed Grenache and Carignan on the banks of the Perquilauquén River, banks created by the granitic sediment from the Coastal Range.

Isidora Vineyard, D.O. Cauquenes, Maule: Planted in 1948. Dry-farmed Semillon on decomposed granite from the Coastal Range.

Guarilihue Alto Vineyard, D.O. Secano Interior Coelemu, Itata: Two different blocks belonging to the same vigneron high in Guarilihue planted in the 1940s. From the upper block comes the fine-boned, more mineral component, and from further down the hillside more generous fruit-driven juice.

• Published Wines 2025
• Published Wines 2024