The Octagono Estate
Marcelo Castro Vera runs a distillery, a brewery, a communal eatery, and shipping container hotel called El Nidal all from the same property high in the mountains behind the city of Leon in the state of Guanajuato. The winery is run mostly by women and directed by winemaker Celia Morales. Fermentations and aging are in buried amphoras (made by local artisans), grapes are pressed by hand and trod by foot, and there’s no use of sulfur or other additives.
Details:
- Wines are fermented for up to 9 months in buried clay pots molded by local San Felipe and Dolores Hidalgo artisans. Sourcing locally brought about the revival of ancestral methods of making pottery - a tradition almost lost in time as sourcing went to China. In forming the amphoras they tried to recreate the classic Georgian kvevri form and ended up with a hybrid that has a particular Mexican imprint. It is their hope that as natural winemaking gradually picks up in Mexico, more winemakers turn to local artisans to source their amphoras, instead of turning to foreign experts, thereby boosting local economies and breathing new life into this millenarian art form
- The grapes they work with come from farmers that work with their land and plants with the same “natural” approach – farming is organic and done without irrigation.
- They don’t shy away from experimenting with table grapes, like Red Globe, which has delivered a surprise with its unexpected joyous temperament.
Total Production: 5 wines, 2,000 cases
2022 Tinto - Octagono
Tasting Notes and Drinking Window:
A 100% Malbec destined to change your opinion of what this grape is all about, this a strikingly electric and zingy expression of a grape typically associated with dark brooding characteristics. So light as to be ethereal and fresh enough to be compared with a breeze moving through a fruit market in the early morning this is a red wine on the verge of exploding what you think red wine can do.
This wine, like all of the wines Octagono makes is as fresh, striking and radical as any wine you’re likely to find. Those looking for the most pure expression of place in wines made by natural methods with zero intervention have found what they are looking for here. Octagono is the only winery in Mexico using exclusively buried (locally made) clay amphoras for fermentation and aging, and along with a commitment to a completely natural approach use no electricity or even the most basic machines in the harvest or winemaking process. While they are difficult to put into words, Octagono’s wines are perhaps best described as imbued with the electric energy characteristic of something that is in the process of becoming – something whose principle attribute is that feeling of exhilaration associated with deep exploration or a formative journey. Deeply expressive and wild, these wines are the essence of exploration itself.
500 cases made
Drinking window: upon release 5 years
Vintage:
2022
Blend:
100% Malbec
Producer:
Octagono
Winemaker:
Celia Morales
Vineyards:
Grapes were sourced from a vineyard planted in 2005 on silty clay-loam soils at an elevation of 6,500 ft.
Winemaking:
Grapes were destemmed, foot trodden, and fermented and macerated on the skins for 15 days in clay vessels before racking off the skins to rest for 6 months on the lees in the same amphoras before bottling.
All Octagono wines are natural, unfiltered, unfined and fermented with whole grape clusters on ambient yeast, and skin contact. SO2 is never added at any point in the process.
Sulfites: No sulfites added
Farming:
Organic, biodynamic, sustainable
Alcohol:
11%
