PEDRO PARRA Y FAMILIA

Pedro Parra considers himself a lucky man, a very lucky man. He holds a PhD in terroir from the Paris Center of Agriculture and has been a consultant for some of the top wine companies in the world such as Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair in Vosne-Romanée, Domaine Roulot in Meursault, Argiano in Brunello and Marco Morengo in Barolo. After 15 years of travelling around the world he decided it was time to make wines that he likes to drink and to create a legacy for his family. He wanted to make pure terroir driven wines from granitic soils in and around his home of Concepción in the Itata Valley, South Central Chile. He is a leading figure in the ‘New Chile’ wine movement making wine in locations that were historically considered too extreme to make premium wine. Pedro focuses on old-vine Pais and Cinsault that he sources from 12 different organically farmed vineyards. There is a long history of vineyards in the Itata Valley where records show grapes were first planted by the Spanish as early as 1550. Pedro’s winemaking is very hands off with low sulfur additions, but he says his wines are not natural, they are terroir wines. Grapes are fermented in different vats such as open steel tanks, oak casks and concrete tanks. He uses 40% to 100% whole cluster depending on the vintage and terroir. The macerations are gentle and last between 20 and 60 days. The wines are then aged in oak tanks and concrete for 1 year before bottling. Pedro is just as passionate about jazz music as he is for terroir, so much so that he has named his Cru wines after some of his favourite jazz musicians – Freddie Hubbard, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Sonny ‘Newk’ Rollins.