Winemaking in the Caribbean: Rescuing the First American Wines

by | 23 Apr, 2016

Fate brought a Dominican entrepreneur and a Chilean winemaker together
to vinify the first wines from Ocoa Bay, in the Dominican Republic, and to rekindle the winemaking dreams of the earliest Spanish Conquistadors.

The earliest vines sailed on Columbus’ three ships from the Canary Islands, bound for the American continent. It was a tiresome journey, but alcohol was certainly not in short supply. Wine being a staple of evangelization, the first grapevine cuttings of Listán Prieto –known in Chile as País– settled in the so-called Spanish West Indies . The fir st wines were produced in the once called island of Hispaniola, which the Dominican Republic and Haiti currently share, and it would have been the very conquistador Hernán Cortés who grew the vineyards for over 5 years, until he built up the courage to go after the Aztec Empire.

However, replaced by other vegetables and fruit trees, vines disappeared from the Dominican map. 500 years had to pass before an architect and real estate developer called Gabriel Acevedo was possessed with the crazy idea of making up for lost time to re-establish an incipient and doubtful viticulture yet filled with history and legends of armors, lance rests, and cross-shaped stakes.

In his scores of trips around the world, Acevedo met with producers from California and Europe, even with Aubert de Villaine, the owner of the legendary Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. The decision was unanimous. “Come on, Gabriel, what are you going to plant vines for? “Better grow coconut trees, bananas or something else!” He then traveled to Switzerland, where a good friend of his told him: “Do it, Gabriel. Follow your dreams.” And so he did.

HOW THE BUSINESSMAN MET THE WINEMAKER

For a fortunate coincidence, Acevedo was a friend of Amable Padilla, former Chilean ambassador to the Dominican Republic, who gave him an excellent piece of advice. “I have a nephew who is a winemaker in Cauquenes. He can give you a hand.” That’s when Felipe Zúñiga, the current owner of Viña San Clemente and former wine manager at Lomas de Cauquenes cooperative, came on the scene.

According to the winemaker, his first rendezvous with Dominican viticulture involved two bottles from the Neyba region, at the poverty-stricken border with Haiti, where the main grape varietal grown is Aramon. “I remember I opened the bottles and gave a very frank assessment. The wine was cloudy, oxidized; there was no life in it. The rate of photorespiration of the plants is extremely high and grape acidity plunges. Truth be told, I didn’t see much future in it,” he admits.

In a meeting in Punta Cana, Gabriel told him about his crazy idea of a vineyard on a slope only 400 meters from the beach in Ocoa Bay, on the south of the island. The vineyard is inside a tourist complex called Ocoa Bay, where they developed the Community of the Vine that allows visitors to enjoy the Caribbean attractions and, at the same time live, the wine culture experience.

Acevedo planted 32 tareas (equivalent to 2 hectares) of grape varietals , including Colombard, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo, Muscat of Hamburg, Italia, Malvasia, Montepulciano, Alfonso Lavallée, Passerina, Syrah, Rebo, Cannonau di Sardegna, Sauvignon Blanc, and Xarel-ló. “That can’t be true,” thought Felipe while watching the vineyards that rolled gently onto the sand. But, it was. He walked through the vineyard, stopped at a Colombard vine and tasted a berry. “This is it,” he thought. The grape revealed delicious fruity flavors and a level of acidity that lent itself well to vinification.

The first harvest took place in 2011. A crew of 30 workers harvested the bunches and pressed them gently in cloth diapers.The juice dripped pristine and protected. In a giant fridge, they vinified the must in pots. And the resulting wine was tasty. The following year, they replaced the diapers and the pots with a pneumatic press and small stainless steel tanks. A crazy dream come true.

A CARIBBEAN TERROIR

Harvesting even four times a year is usual in Neyba, but Felipe managed the vines in Ocoa Bay to harvest twice a year, in June and January, to dodge the hurricane season. “The winter harvest is much better because humidity is not that high. Unlike the rest of the country, where humidity is as high as 90%, in Ocoa Bay humidity ranges from 57% to 60%. This allows us to manage the plant vigor and focus on the grapes,” he explains.

The winemaker pushes water stress to the limit, until the plants feel they are on the verge of death. “It’s rather brutal,” he comments. We prune as soon as they shed their leaves, 3 to 4 months before harvesting. Then come the rains and the vines come back to life, pretty much like the mythical phoenix, and get to thrive in this rolling granite, lime-rich soil.

Felipe works with a banana-specialist agricultural engineer whose expertise in plant physiology allows him to cope with the tropical whims of the vines. The soil is very interesting and rainfall in the bay area is not as high as elsewhere on the island. The annual average is 600 mm, which is similar to the average precipitation that Cauquenes has.

The landscape in this corner of paradise is breathtaking. The vines coexist with cacti and guayacan trees. The latter take half a century to develop their roots and their wood is so dense that it does not float. “As a local saying goes, you need to be like a guayacan tree,” says Felipe to justify somehow their audacious winemaking adventure.

A few years into the project, they renewed some varieties, like Colombard, Tempranillo and a País the very winemaker brought from Cauquenes. These three grape varietals are Ocoa Bay’s troika and the symbol of the recovery of a primal, foundational viticulture that resurfaces thanks to the fortunate alliance of a Dominican tourism entrepreneur and a Chilean winemaker.

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