Description
Wine Details
This wine is a rosé that comes from a 79-year-old vineyard old from the Pacific coast and from a vineyard in the mountains of Tecate, cultivated in rainforests and frank foot, composed the first of Italian varieties unidentified and the second of Misión and Rosa del Peru. The vines are planted near the ocean Pacific 300 meters above the sea level in loamy soils sand and granite in the area of San Antonio de las Minas, and in the second vineyard 800 meters from height in the Tanama Valley in Tecate, Baja California.
Alcohol Grade: 12.5%
Aging/ Vinification: The grapes are harvested by hand, destemmed and then direct pressed. The fermentation is with yeast wild in stainless tank. Without filtration and with 10 ppm added of SO2 when bottling.
Best to have it: 6-8ºC
Size: 750 ml
The Winery: Bichi Wines
Mexico has a centuries-long history of winemaking that has mostly gone under the radar. Spanish conquistadores planted vines in the early 1500’s, before both Chile and Argentina, and Baja California represents about 90% of the vines in the entire country due to the ideal climate and geography. Brothers Noel & Jair Tellez, with the help of Chilean (by way of Burgundy) winemaker Louis-Antoine Luyt, are producing amazingly fresh and energetic wines from very old, recently recovered vineyards of Misión (aka Listán Prieto), Rosa del Peru (aka Moscatel Negro), Tempranillo and Carinena, among other varieties. Bichi means “naked” in some parts of northern Mexico, and for Téllez and Luyt, it thus seemed like an appropriate name to give their new natural wine project.
Based at the Téllez family ranch in Tecate, just over the border from California, Bichi farms 10 hectares of their own Tecate vineyards biodynamically and collaborates with a growing family of organic farmers working vineyard land in Tecate and around Valle de Guadalupe. The majority of the vines are head-trained and all are dry-farmed, hand harvested, fermented with native yeast, and aged in neutral barrel or vat so that the emphasis is on each wine’s Mexican terruño.