(Winemag) - Progressive winemakers are blazing a southerly trail to Chile’s oldest vineyards, intent on bottling wines of character from grapes like Carignan, Cinsault, País, Muscat and Riesling. It’s a romantic tale of new wines from previously underappreciated heritage vines.

Last December, Marcelo Retamal and I sat under a solitary olive tree in the middle of De Martino’s 112-year-old Santa Cruz de Guarilihue vineyard. There, we tasted a succession of delicious dry-farmed, old-vine Cinsaults. Thoroughly impressed, I turned to Retamal, De Martino’s longtime winemaker, and said, “These are not the Chilean wines most people know.”

Places like Guarilihue in the Itata Valley and Cauquenes and Sauzal in neighboring Maule Valley, where Carignan is king, were just blips on the Chilean wine map to me prior to visiting the country’s southernmost wine regions, sprawling Bío Bío included.