Peru winery makes wine from lost petit verdot clone

Wine made from a ‘lost’ petit verdot clone will go on sale in Peru later this year.

Tacama, one of Peru’s leading wine producers, will not release the name of the clone but claims it has been growing there since the 1980’s.

‘It was imported from France and then forgotten about,’ said Daniel Geller, Tacama’s head of sales.

Tacama has about 20 hectares of the special petit verdot vines. Only now, however, are they producing enough volume and quality to make selling a mono varietal petit verdot wine possible.

About 1,000 cases of the wine will go on sale in July this year.

Tacama will sell the first 2008 vintage only in Peru, but has plans to export in the future.

Geller believes Tacama, in the country’s southern Ica region, may be the only sizeable plantation of the lost clone anywhere in the world.

‘Everyone else has the clone 400, but this one worked here,’ he said.

Tacama produces 1.4m bottles of wine annually and 120,000 bottles of pisco, a Peruvian grape based brandy. About 15% of total production is exported.

Written by Sophie Kevany