The Alta Elqui is as remote a winemaking region as exists on earth—a desert mountain valley of towering elevations. The vines in the region are only watered by the snow melt trickling down through the granitic subsoils and bedrock. Alvaro Flaño was drawn to the village of Alcohuaz because he believed that great wines could be begged from the poor granite slopes of that wild place. He planted a wide variety of European varietals to test what would survive the perilous climate and how the varietals would express the unknown terroirs. He planted the varietals that most shined through his experiment. This exciting work caught the attention of the great Chilean winemaker, Marcelo Retamal who joined Viñedos de Alchohuaz before the first vintage. Retarnal is one of the champions of the back-to-the-soil movement sweeping through Chile. At Viñedos de Alchohuaz, Reta made sure the plots were only ever farmed organically, and he brought a non-interventionist philosophy to the cellar. Each variety is hand harvested and crushed by foot in stone lagars. Fermentations take place spontaneously. After pressing, the wine flows by gravity into concrete eggs, Stockinger foudres, and French oak vats where it ages. Each harvest the cuvées are decided anew with careful tasting and blending. Sometimes they are blended and sometimes they are allowed to remain single-variety, single vineyard expressions. The wines that result stun in their deftness and balance.

Grus comes from the local name for the Southern Crane constellation. The vineyards average around 2,000 meters on sand, granite, and gravel. The grapes are a blend of syrah, grenache, and small amounts of petite syrah and petite verdot. This wine has a bright, fresh shimmer of blue plums and blueberries, game bird and peppercorns, terracotta, lavender, and hibiscus.