Morandé Golden Harvest is a wine that is 100% in tune with the innovative spirit of the winery and its creation has meant a true paradigm shift with respect to its category. Pablo Morandé, winemaking director of Viña Morandé, always dreamed of making a high-quality Late Harvest in the Casablanca Valley, and in 2000 he launched Golden Harvest

from the El Ensueño vineyard located in the Casablanca valley, Lo Ovalle sector. El Ensueño is in the coldest sector of the Casablanca Valley, with a constant presence of morning mists coming from the coast. This condition during the summer or ripening period of the grapes raises the relative humidity and thus favors the development of Botrytis cinerea, a fungus that produces the coveted “noble rot”.

This condition – which under high humidity conditions is a problem for the grapes since the same fungus develops violently and negatively – is the key factor in the production of sweet wines. In the case of our Golden Harvest, noble rot has only appeared abundantly in the harvests of the years 2000, 2007 and 2013.

As for its vinification, after choosing the bunches most affected by raisining and the development of the fungus, the berries are selected and destemmed grain by grain by hand. They are pressed in vertical hydraulic presses, so that two types of juice are obtained, one more fluid or liquid and another that is a kind of honey, concentrated and more viscous. Both are fermented in barrels for almost a year.

To this fermenting must, a proportion equivalent to the 6 Hungarian puttonyos of botrytised grapes is added. This element is crucial to bringing Golden Harvest to life and the reason why it differs fundamentally from a traditional Late Harvest. After the exhaustion of the yeasts, the wine is kept for a second year in its original barrels, until it is bottled.

And it is that following the examples that exist in countries like Hungary, Ukraine and Slovenia, in Golden Harvest you can find reminiscences of these historical wines, which were the inspiration for our proposal. A wine made completely by hand, of small production, with a complex winemaking process, which makes it very special and unique, and which has meant a true paradigm shift with respect to its category, being considered by many to be the best sweet wine in Chile.