Mission, La Casa Vieja - 2021

A lot’s happened this year that I bet my past self would not believe. One of those things is that I fell in love with natural wine from Mexico. Baja California in particular. This is a light, funky red made from Mission, a grape that was planted by Spanish missionaries across their entire empire in the 16th century. Meaning there are plots of 120+yr ungrafted vines in Mexico as well as on the Canary Islands. La Casa Vieja doesn’t use SO2 at any point during winemaking. The fruit for this bottle is from one single-acre estate vineyard. It’s crushed by foot and goes from plastic to concrete to neutral oak before resting in glass carboys. Earthy, wild, and musky but fresh and light on its feet with gummy, waxy cherry and warm spices rounding out the palate.