Viña San Pedro launches Los Despedidos

Chile’s VSPT Wine Group is to launch a new label for off-beat wines under the name Los Despedidos – meaning ‘the dismissed’.

Los Despedidos from Chile’s VSPT Wine Group comprises a País and Cinsault

According to Felipe Bravo, who is regional director at the producer, Los Despedidos will be released on 21 August with two wines from the far south of Chile using old bush vine Cinsault and País grown in the Itata wine region.

As for the choice of the new range’s name, Bravo explained that the VSPT Wine Group had tasked its four winemakers to each make one wine, and had joked that if their wines weren’t good, then they would all be fired.

Bravo also told db – who tasted the new wines last month in Chile ­– that the Los Despedidos wines were an attempt to prove that VSPT Wine Group was “innovative”, despite its reputation as a “traditional” producer in Chile.

Both wines use grapes from the Secano Interior within the Itata Valley where 80-90 year old vines of Cinsault as well as País are planted, but were previously used to make table wine for local consumption.

Although just two wines currently feature in Los Despedidos range, Bravo said that there is a list of 14 different varieties under consideration for the future, including some white grapes.

He said that the next most likely addition to the line-up would be a Garnacha from old bush vines grown in the same southerly part of Chile.

Chile’s VSPT Wine Group (Viña San Pedro Tarapacá) is the biggest domestically and the country’s second largest exporter. It is comprised of seven Chilean and two Argentinean wineries.

Los Despedidos: Simon Aravena, Bianca Jamarne, Gonzalo Castro, Marcelo Garcia, Natalia Brito and Matias Gamerre