A project that started in a Garage…
Garage Wine literally started in Pilar and Derek’s garage. After half a dozen harvests making wine for an informal market of family and friends, they began exporting to the UK and Denmark in 2006.
Over the years of working in the community, we have formed a true group of vineyard workers whose skills are rooted in traditional, old-fashioned vineyard practices: authentic. We cultivate vineyards with small farming partners who work with horses and plows, just as their families have done for generations. We have chosen to lease some of the plots long-term, as the next generation moved to the city, creating more jobs for local workers who want to stay on the farm.
Our Vigno
This wine was grown by a small farmer in the Maule. It was farmed by hand and horse with traditional methods of dry-farming 70+ year old vines with vines. It was fermented naturally in small tanks with open-tops. Caps were punched down by hand and pressing was strictly manual. The wine was aged in barrels over two winters— barrels of three or more uses. This wine is a tribute to the resilience of the ploughmen farmers of the Maule who have been stewards of the vines since colonial times.
In soil we trust
Our people, who work with us year-round from pruning to harvest, are the ones who produce most of our fruit. Other farms are leased long-term.
After years of trying to balance ideas like working the land with horses and pruning during the waning moon, we have recently started tackling the challenges of regenerative farming alongside our team. There’s a lot to learn and much to apply on a practical level, but together we continue to follow the thread.
Our Team
Pilar Miranda
CEO – Co-founder – OenologistAgro Engineer Winemaker – Universidad de Chile
· Company keel
· Enjoys navigating complexity
· Board of Directors Vigno, MoVI,
· Structured like fine wine
Derek Mossman
Co-founderCanadian expat
· MA Comparative literature Columbia U.
· Arrived Chile as ski coach (summer training)
· Learned wine hands-on in the cellar
· Status quo denier
· Insurgent entrepreneur
· Still curious
Alvaro Peña
Researcher-PhD Viticulture UP Madrid
· Wine scientist/ researcher / Profe U de Chile
· Technical counter-point for GWCo to escape Chilean wine’s comfort zone — with a lab and method behind the madness
Ernesto Müller
Entrepreneur– PhD Viticulture U de Chile FEN
· Entrepreneur / transformational thinker
· Wine-trade veteran
· Old-vines champion
· Incapable of sitting still