Viña La Rosa 2024 Carmenère El Sauce

ABOUT THE PRODUCER

• Viña La Rosa is one of the oldest wineries in Chile, with continuous winegrowing history since 1824. The estate was originally purchased from Manuel Blanco Encalada, Chile’s first president, and it remains a family winery — the Ossa family, now in its seventh generation under president Ismael Ossa Prieto, with Daniel Eyzaguirre as general manager.
• The wines are made by Cynthia Ortiz, an agronomist from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with a WSET Level 3 Award in Wines, who came to La Rosa in 2011 after harvests in Chile and abroad. Her approach is deliberately unfashionable: honest wines with identity, made to be enjoyed rather than decoded.
• “The hard part isn’t making a good wine — there are thousands of good wines. The hard part is making a wine with its own identity, one that actually connects its place with the person drinking it.” — Cynthia Ortiz

ABOUT THE WINE

• This bottling began in 2011 as a soil study, not a wine. La Rosa brought in terroir specialist Pedro Parra to map the soils of Viña Cerro, one of the family’s estates, cross-referencing field observation with electromagnetic conductivity readings. The best Carmenère ground kept turning up under other crops — or unplanted. They kept looking, because Peumo is the place for Carmenère in Chile, and finally found it in El Sauce: a massal-selection Carmenère block planted in 1993.
• Out of 600 planted hectares, 7.7 were set aside. Each sub-block was vinified separately in 2012 and tasted down, and only blocks 62, 63, 64 and 65 made the cut — two hectares out of six hundred. That is the wine.
• The site sits at 167 m on colluvial soils: deep, fertile, good moisture retention, with stones in the subsoil dragged down off the slopes over centuries giving it drainage. Carmenère ripens very slowly and needs exactly that — water held in the clay and enough fertility to keep the leaves green late into the season so photosynthesis continues. The result is slow, even ripening that preserves fruit and accumulates polyphenols. Mediterranean climate, hot summers and mild autumns keep the vine physiologically active through the long hang.

Vintage: 2024 | Wine Type: Red Wine
Varietal: 100% Carmenère
Origin: Chile | Appellation: D.O. Valle del Cachapoal — Peumo
Vineyard: El Sauce (blocks 62–65) — planted 1993, own-rooted, massal selection, 2 ha, SW row orientation, 167 m. Estate fruit.
Farming: Certified sustainable under Chile’s Código Nacional de Sustentabilidad — ECOCERT Chile S.A., registration CNS-01-052016-028. Cover crops, soil-moisture-probe-driven drip irrigation from the Cachapoal river, scouted pest pressure to minimize chemical use, sulfur dusting for powdery mildew, pheromone confusion for Lobesia botrana, citrus extracts and Bacillus/Trichoderma for botrytis.
Yields: 7,000–8,000 kg/ha
Elaboration: Hand-harvested into small lugs in two passes starting April 5, called by berry tasting and analysis rather than a number — with Carmenère the whole game is catching the moment the fruit loses its green edge without losing acidity. Fruit came in at 23.2° Brix, 4.5 g/L TA, pH 3.5. Hand-sorted twice, first by cluster and then berry by berry, and moved to tank by gravity. Fully destemmed, no stems in the ferment. Three to four days cold soak at 10°C, 7–10% saignée, then a 10–15 day alcoholic fermentation at 26–27°C in stainless steel of 2,000, 4,000 and 10,000 liters, with selected yeasts (Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Lachancea thermotolerans) chosen because they generate acidity naturally — no acid additions, which Cynthia says harden the profile. 30 ppm SO₂ at crush, 20 g/hL organic nitrogen and 3 g/hL of maceration enzyme are the only additions. No water, ever. Gentle pumpovers and punchdowns decided by daily tasting; roughly 30 days total on skins including a post-fermentation maceration for structure and texture. Vertical basket press, separated into head, heart and tail — all three tasted, with the heart typically blended back into the free-run.
Conservation: Malolactic is spontaneous and complete, in French oak, taking two to three months. Aged 14–16 months in 225-liter French oak (Dargaud & Jaeglé Grandes Vosgues TM and Taransaud Fruit T) and concrete egg, 25–30% new oak. First racking off gross lees after malo, then bâtonnage weekly on fine lees, easing to monthly. Unfined, with a coarse 10-micron plate filtration before bottling. Bottled November 5, 2025; the wine rests six months to a year in bottle before release.
Format: 6 x 750 ml
Winemaker: Cynthia Ortiz

THE 2024 VINTAGE

The honest story on this wine is the vintage that isn’t in the bottle. Before making the 2024, Cynthia had to defend the decision not to produce the previous vintage at all — in her judgment it didn’t express the quality the wine is meant to have. Not an easy call inside a 200-year-old house. She believes 2024 is one of the great vintages of this wine.

The season ran clean: frost events of -1.5 to -3°C in June–July did no damage, 424 mm of rainfall recharged the soils, and heat waves above 35°C through much of January were managed by canopy work to shade the fruit. Vertical shoot positioning, 14 shoots per meter, canopy balanced through nutrition and water so the berries stay exposed but protected — fresh aromatics, good airflow, no disease pressure.

TASTING NOTES

Deep ruby. Very aromatic — blackberry, violets, cacao, cooking herbs and black pepper, with the roasted-paprika and truffle notes that mark Peumo Carmenère. The palate is soft and silky with a harmonious texture, classic Peumo but modern in feel: vibrant, with real acidity carrying juicy tannins through a long, persistent finish of fruit, flowers, coffee and cacao. Savory, and it invites the next glass. Serve at 61–64°F and decant. Excellent with venison loin, curry, or grilled quail.

TECHNICAL DATA

Alcohol: 14% | TA: 5.01 g/l | VA: 0.45 g/l | Residual Sugar: 2.48 g/l | pH: 3.45

PRESS & POINTS

2024 – 95 Points, Tim Atkin | 95 Points, International Wine Challenge | 94 Points, Vinous (Joaquín Hidalgo) | 94 Points, Alistair Cooper MW | 92 Points, Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate
2022 – Master Medal, Global Carmenère Masters + Master Winemakers 100 | 94 Points, Tim Atkin