Next was a visit to Polkura Wines which is located on the western side of the Colchagua Valley.
It was a cooler and wet day in the region and it was welcome to do an interview and a wine tasting with Sven Bruchfeld in his hillside cabin which was nice and toasty due to a wood burning stove working hard like we were.
The Polkura name comes from the hill where they have planted the vineyard and means ‘yellow stone’ in the ancient Mapuche language. There is a large amount of yellow granite in the soils. They only make 6,000 cases of wine at the moment which is very small on the Chilean scale of production and Polkura is part of the Movement of Independent Vintners MOVI in Chile. Polkura make 8 wines at present with 6 of them being Syrah based. Sven’s passion for Syrah is clear and he says: “Syrah adapts to so many different soils that makes it a really fascinating variety to work with.”
Our favourite wine here was the Polkura Secano Dry Farmed 2013 which is 90% Syrah and 10% Grenache. It shows a lovely fruity second layer and well balanced minerality.
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around the world in 80 wines 