The right altitude: a trailblazing Bolivian winery

Nayan Gowda, 50, is a winemaking gun for hire. Although he took to making wine only in his mid-thirties, after working as a chef at The Ivy in Covent Garden, he has already made it in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Hungary, Ukraine, South Africa, Norway, Chile, Kazakhstan and, most recently, Bolivia, where he has created two vintages during the pandemic and overcome some of the biggest challenges any wine producer could face.

Bolivia is home to some of the world’s highest vineyards, but the most remarkable aspect of Gowda’s work is not altitude but the 200-year-old vines themselves. In the Cinti Valley, they do not grow in neat rows on trellises, nor as low bushes, but clamber, undisciplined, up trees.

The most essential bit of vineyard equipment is a ladder. Vines, whose natural instinct is to climb, could easily grow six metres tall without humans poised to interfere. The main job during the pruning season, when first the trees and then the vines must be trimmed, is to cut down the highest growth so that the part of the vine that produces fruit is reachable — by ladder.

Gowda was recruited by María José Granier, who belongs to a family of more conventional wine producers in Bolivia. She was alerted to the unique qualities of the arboreal vines of the Cinti Valley by Dutch Master of Wine Cees van Casteren who, pre-pandemic, visited Bolivia frequently as part of a Dutch government development programme.

The Granier family make the sort of big, beefy reds that have been favoured by Bolivian wine drinkers historically. Yet María José wanted to produce something different. The idea of rescuing heritage vines and providing a livelihood for local subsistence farmers also appealed to her and she was determined that her and Gowda’s wines, called Jardin Oculto (hidden garden), should be pitched at a premium price, the equivalent of $15 a bottle in Bolivia, 10 times the cost of the most basic wine available.

These tree-climbing vines come in three varieties, adding to the 54 that Gowda had previously vinified. The Moscatel is the same as the Muscat of Alexandria grown in southern Spain, while the two red wine grapes are Negra Criolla (the same as Chile’s País and California’s Mission) and a local speciality named after the Bolivian town of Vischoqueña. Until the arrival of Granier and Gowda, these grapes were primarily distilled into the country’s favourite spirit singani or disappeared into blends with the international varieties that are planted in Bolivia’s more conventional vineyards, many of them near the town of Tarija.

At 2,300m, the Cinti valley is twice as high as the European mainland’s highest vineyard in the Alps. To get there involves a beautiful but perilous drive across two mountain ranges from the Tarija winery that has loaned space to the Jardin Oculto project. Just as the grapes for Gowda’s first vintage in 2020 reached peak ripeness, there were storms so fierce that the country shut down. Harvest had to be delayed. While Gowda feels the 2020 grapes were a little riper than ideal, the three 2020 wines I tasted were genuinely thrilling.

Perhaps the most unusual was a still white wine made from the local Vischoqueña grape. They had meant to make a sparkling wine, though realised it would have to be a little less fizzy than sparkling wines drunk elsewhere. That’s because, at altitudes such as the capital La Paz’s 3,640m, wine would gush inconveniently unless they reduced the pressure in the bottle. They also understood they would have to leave the sediment in the bottle because, in Bolivia, there is none of the disgorging equipment that leaves champagne crystal clear.

But with Covid, the border with Argentina was closed and their order of the sturdy bottles needed for sparkling wine never arrived. It meant Gowda had to turn his base wine for fizz into a still wine. And he seems to have achieved this with aplomb. The 2020 Blanc de Noirs has proved so popular with Bolivia’s better-heeled wine drinkers that he has made it again in 2021. “I just have to remember what I did. We’re learning every time we open a bottle,” he confesses. He describes himself as “addicted to learning”, which is what drew him to Bolivia.

The other two 2020s comprise a white from the Moscatel grapes and a very pale, dry Negra Criolla. The Moscatel is a pungent, dry white with some Burgundian features (María José instructed Gowda that it “shouldn’t taste like a Moscatel”). The Negra Criolla is much more sophisticated than many of the new-wave light reds produced today from its cousin País on the other side of the Andes in Chile. I picked up a pepper note in this wine and apparently this particular vineyard (if vineyard is the right word for such a wilderness) is full of the pink-peppercorn trees known as Schinus molle. One of the two additional vineyards they sourced fruit from this year is called Los Membrillos because it is full of wild quince trees, which have a predictable effect on the grape juice.

They made only 5,000 bottles in 2020 — with some difficulty because Gowda dislocated his shoulder — and have not increased production in 2021 since they haven’t yet been able to develop export markets. They are also stymied by a chronic lack of equipment. All Gowda had access to while winemaking was a hydrometer, a thermometer, a pump, two hoses and a few small tanks. The wines can boast of being unfined and unfiltered for entirely practical reasons. The sort of analysis required for international trade is virtually impossible as there are no accredited labs in Bolivia and, besides, any chemicals needed are tightly controlled because, I am told, they are often assumed to be used for drug production. Sampling the grapes, vital in deciding when to pick, is hampered by the wide variation in height off the ground. The sugar content of grapes across the bunches from low to high can vary by up to 2 per cent in terms of potential alcohol levels.

Temperature control is a luxury that Gowda doesn’t have. But the truck transporting the grapes parks overnight in the mountains at 3,400m, so that fruit picked in temperatures of 25C arrives having been cooled naturally to 8C.

Throughout his Bolivian adventures Gowda has kept his social media followers enthralled with tales of sneaking into the winery during the pandemic to check on the progress of his ferments, equipment shortages, electricity outages and quarantines. His recent return to the UK from Bolivia entailed 10 days in the Gatwick Four Points hotel, where he savoured a care package sent by one of his more avid online followers.

What next? He really wanted to help out a friend with a vineyard in Bhutan which is at about the same elevation as Cinti Valley, but winemaking is on hold there because of the pandemic. Meanwhile, he has persuaded his doctor parents to return to India from Derbyshire. Perhaps he could offer a helping hand to the developing Indian wine industry?

Tasting notes on the wines, available only in Bolivia for now, on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com.

Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson

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