Francisco, as you bring in the red grapes, talk us through the differences between each variety as you harvest it.

Well, it depends on the variety. Because for all our Reserve wines and Icon wines we hand harvest into small cases of just fourteen to fifteen kilos and then take them in refrigerated trucks to the winery. Once there, grape varieties like Merlot and Pinot Noir we do a ‘cold soak’ and macerate them.

That’s interesting because I’ve heard a lot of people talk about a cold soak but nobody has ever talked me through exactly what happens.

Well, you crush the grapes, and you already know about how we use two sorting tables. These are before and after the crusher/destemmer so that we can take out anything like leaves and also individual berries that are either under-ripe or over-ripe. Then we take the temperature of those crushed grapes down to eight to ten degrees for three to five, six or seven days. What this gives you is more colour and aromas. But because it’s done cold you don’t get too much tannin or bitterness. It makes a wine that is more intense without these bitter characteristics. If you want to know why, it is because tannin is more soluble in alcohol than water, so by soaking it before it ferments it brings out the colour and aromatic precursors, but not the more alcohol-soluble tannins.

What other things are you doing in the winery then?

Well, when we receive the grapes we’ve been trying a new machine that takes the raisins off the selection at the sorting table. It uses airflow over the destemmed grapes. Since over-ripe grapes have started to become like raisins they have lost water and so they’re lighter. The air flows over the table and blows away the grapes that will give wine a raisiny, over-ripe aroma and taste. It can also reduce the alcohol level of the finished wine, depending on the proportion of raisined grapes in the harvest.

Once they come into the winery, we’ve been trying some co-fermentation of red and white varieties in some lots. The idea is that if you ferment red grapes with a small percentage or white grapes – say five percent – it helps in fixing the colour because it uses an enzyme that is found in the white grape. So by adding some white grapes you make a wine that is actually darker. It’s a traditional technique in several parts of the world. Think of Sangiovese co-fermented with Malvasia or Trebbiano in Chianti. Or Shiraz with Viognier in the Cote Rotie. These are small lots though and not necessarily commercial. We’re also experimenting with some red and red co-fermentation. Cabernet and Shiraz or Shiraz and Merlot.

Aside from these interesting experimental ideas, how does winemaking practice differ between grape varieties?

Well, with varieties like Sangoivese and Pinot Noir they are more vulnerable to oxygen – they have fewer antioxidants in their skins. So we do fewer open pumpovers, where we are drawing juice out from the bottom of the tank and then spraying it over the cap of skins to draw out colour, flavour and maintain an even temperature within the vat, preventing the cap form getting too hot. Maybe only pumping over in closed conditions and just sometimes doing open pumpovers when we need to provide oxygen for the yeast.

With Cabernet Franc and Merlot we’ve been experimenting with some part-barrel fermentation. What we do is when the must is nearly finishing fermentation – when it has perhaps 20grams per litre of sugar – we send it to the barrels to finish off. What we do is press the juice from the skins and in the barrels the wines finish fermenting quite warm and extract more from the wood. We use second year barrels but as the fermentation is warm inside it extracts flavours that appear to be from a first year, new barrel. But also there is better extraction of wood flavours, more integration and no bitterness from the wood. Also we tend to send varieties that can be higher tannin, more aggressive or dryer. Varieties like Cabernet Franc. And they become rounder, they integrate more and are ready for drinking earlier. But you can only do it with good wines from good lots.

Fermentation for most wines though seems pretty straightforward, what I’m keen to understand about is how you manage the wines after fermentation has finished, because I hear that this is a critical time.

Post-fermentation we do a twenty five to thirty day maceration. And throughout this we taste the wine daily, checking that it isn’t too stemmy or dry on the palate. So that this means that in total the wine spends around thirty days in contact with the skins. Five to seven days whilst it ferments, and the rest during post-fermentation maceration.

But sometimes I like either to take the wine out early – after maybe twelve days of maceration. This can give you a bit of a ‘Coca Cola’ wine. The fruit is soft because the effect of the tannins is not that strong. Or I will leave the wine for over twenty five days. Because this is what happens. If I press the wine off the skins in the twelve days after fermentation then I have a wine that is fresh. But between twelve and twenty five days it’s hard to tell what the wine is like. The tannins go through an aggressive stage. At this stage many people get scared and press the wine but it still has these aggressive tannins. But during that time – the period from twelve to twenty five days maceration – the tannins polymerize and this means that the more aggressive tannins eventually precipitate leaving a rounder, softer wine.

It’s interesting. It can be dependent on temperature. With a bigger, more aggressive wine a higher maceration temperature will give you more precipitation.

And oak – how much of your red and white wine goes into barrels? And is that the only way of adding oak flavour?

For Reserve wines and up we only use barrels. 50% of these are new barrels in Reserve wines, and 100% are new French in our Icon wines.

In our more commercial wines like the Estate wines we use the used barrels from the Reserve level wines for maybe a further three to five years – depending on the individual barrel. And we also use a proportion of oak staves within the tanks. These staves can give the flavours – mocha, vanilla and toast – then the older barrels can give the wine some oxygen and refine the wines as they age there.

What sort of things are you doing during all of this? What's your role? And your team – who does what there? Give us a bit of a roll call

Well, there are six others. And they are all very good. I oversee everything and I have lots of duties outside the winery – ongoing meetings that might be nothing to do with harvest or meeting importers and journalists.

So we have one in charge of the production area, a lady called Turisima. She is in charge of the bottling programme and quality control. There is Frederico who is in charge of our barrels. We have a winemaker – Ricardo – who is an expert at working with our tanks. Then we have winemakers who head operations at our two wineries. Pedro Contreras is my right hand man I suppose making our Reserva and Icon wines in Panquehue. And in Curico is Wladimir Meder who makes our whites and varietals. We also have two other people in the south.

Me? I’m doing nothing really because I have everything! No, seriously, I do a lot of tasting and I help decide on maceration times and what to do. Things like whether we should use micro-oxidation on a lot and so on. Then I also have to go to the vineyard during the day, come back in the evenings and check the wine. And like I said, life goes on with communications and PR and so on. But it’s easier now than it was because we have a good team.

And what happens after the wine finishes its fermentation – what's next?

We keep all the lots separate into the barrels and they go through life separately until I decide what to do with them – Icon, Reserva, Varietal. Usually I have the various quality levels in a plan but sometimes there are surprises. Sometimes good surprises. Sometimes bad.

So at twelve months in barrel we make bottle our Reserve wines and after eighteen months we bottle the Icon wines.

During this time every lot has a Brettanomyces check [a rogue yeast that produces unwanted horsey or Elastoplast/Bandaid aromas in wine]. This is complex, because remember we have maybe one hundred and seventy different lots in Panquehue. If we find Brettanomyces then we don’t mix that wine and we treat it with sulphur dioxide. We do a ‘Brett’ culture every month and if after three months in a row we don’t find anything then we do it every couple of months. But you know I think we’ve pretty much eliminated Brett problems.

Give us an insight into the harvest and winemaking so far – how happy are you with your assessment of the year?

The weather has been good, but you know earlier in the year it was moving fast. We thought this year’s harvest would be two to three weeks early. Then it suddenly cooled in March. So in the end we have an average peaking of ripeness. But you know it was average only in the time of peaking. The quality is much better than 2006. Mainly because we had more yield in 2006. It’s a low crop in 2007. In total we have diminished by fifteen to twenty per cent. Not only us too. But this is good for quality. The fact of low yields, especially in Cabernet, helps ripeness, concentration and quality.

The wines are showing dry tannins with good structure and the best wines will need time. But you know in general the harvest will finish around the 10th May, the fermentations are going well, and there is good acidity.

Of the main varietals, in Chardonnay the wines are very fresh and good. In Sauvignon Blanc it wasn’t so easy though. People got stressed when we were having a heat wave earlier in the season and harvested early. Now I did some lots – obviously, just to check – and the wines are lemony, lean, citric and grassy. But mostly we waited and the wines from those lots are luscious and fresh.

In reds, well with Merlot we had some collapse. This is a problem with Merlot in Chile. What happens is that the grape doesn’t finish ripening and it degrades. It’s especially true on own-rooted plants like we have in Chile. Merlot has weak roots. And the vine keeps its stomas [pores on the leaves of the vine] open even in the heat. This stresses the vine too much. So you have to be really careful on water management. So we had low yields and this may affect supply a little bit, but the low yields mean it’s very good quality.

And Cabernet – it looks good. The tannins are a little firm so we’ve extracted a little less, but the wines will keep very well. You know I’m really very happy.

And just before you go – how are you?

Tired, but very happy. My wife and daughter have come back and so we are together as a family after the hard work of the harvest. Yes, I’m very happy.

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