Guatemala's Only Winery

When we plan our vacation, my wife, Deborah, tries to find a destination where there is no wine — or at least where there are no wineries to visit. Yet somehow I manage to sniff them out. No wineries on Maui? I found one called Tedeschi that has two grape harvests a year. Ireland? I found the Emerald isle’s only vineyard just outside Cork. St. Croix? No winery, but a rum distillery to ...
Guatemala's Only Winery
Chateau DeFay, Guatemala
When we plan our vacation, my wife, Deborah, tries to find a destination where there is no wine or at least where there are no wineries to visit. Yet somehow I manage to sniff them out. No wineries on Maui? I found one called Tedeschi that has two grape harvests a year. Ireland? I found the Emerald isle’s only vineyard just outside Cork. St. Croix? No winery, but a rum distillery to tour and taste.

So when we booked a week in Guatemala in February – to attend the opening of a middle school in La Union funded by Grapes for Humanity Canada foundation – Deborah was convinced that no one would be growing wine there.

But a quick Google search revealed Guatemala’s only winery: Château DeFay, a former coffee plantation in Santa Maria de Jesus, south of the country’s ancient capital, Antigua, now a World Heritage site.

The winery and the vineyard are located on the eastern slope of the Agua volcano. A story I read on the Internet warned of the rutty, boulder-strewn road leading to the estate but did not mention the garage dump that was ablaze and circled by hungry dogs. However, the reference to Château DeFay’s “800 square foot fermentation building which holds seven large and gleaming stainless steel tanks and a host of smaller versions. The equipment is new and expensive. The wines are new and equally expensive …”
all of this was encouraging.

Our party of eight, having survived the six-kilometre road (indicated by the name painted on a rock as you approach Santa Maria de Jesus), finally arrived at a 650-metre corridor of trees that led to a château
a building that would not be out of place in Normandy.

The vineyard above the château looked a bit bedraggled, and the unenthusiastic reception by six German Shepherds did nothing to dampen my anticipation of a unique tasting experience. We were greeted by the winery manager, Guillermo Alvaro, wearing a Guess T-Shirt. He told us this story:

Jacques Defay, an economist with the Inter-American Development Bank, based in Virginia, fell in love with Guatemala and bought land in 1997. Two years later, he and his wife, Angie, moved there, determined to create the country’s first winery after first attempting to grow raspberries and asparagus. Undaunted by the Ministry of Agriculture’s warning that grapes could not be grown in Guatemala because of the rains, Jacques hired a Californian oenologist, Bruno Coppola (a distant relation of Francis Ford Coppola), who imported 25 grape varieties from Washington State and Napa. After seven years of trial and error, they settled on Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Grenache, Fragolino, Pinot Gris, Riesling and Muscatel. From these grapes and various fruits they produced 3,500 cases; they sold the wine only at the winery.

All of this was recounted in Spanish at a speed that thwarted an accurate translation, so I thought we might get a better sense of the operation by walking through the vineyard. Guillermo led us down to the sorriest-looking vines I have ever seen
meagre and spindly with no sign of vegetative activity. Almost by way of apology, it was explained that Tropical Storm Agatha had swept through Central America for two days at the end of May 2010, devastating the vineyard. In fact, last time Château DeFay made any wine was from the 2009 vintage.

Guillermo said their intention was to blend fruit juice into future wines when the vineyard would once more produce a quality crop. Following the vineyard visit, we toured the winery and admired the shiny stainless steel tanks. But there was no wine to be seen on the premises, only cases and cases of empty bottles.

To taste the wines, we had to repair to the tasting room in the Normandy château. We started with a previously opened bottle of Château DeFay Santa Maria Blanc 2009 that was oxidized. There followed a 2008 blend of Pinot Gris and honey that tasted like mead, a 2009 Fragolino and Grenache blend (nutty, strawberry flavour), and on through seven more bottles of wine that were either Bordeaux-style blends or white wines blended with fruit juice
one with mango, one with blackberries. The most drinkable product was the final wine, Don Jacques Reserve 2009, a Shiraz (noted as ‘Shyraz’ on the back label) that tasted rather like a South African Pinotage.

I bought a bottle of the Shiraz for my Toronto wine writer colleague John Szabo to taste, since he’s writing a book about wines around the world grown in volcanic soil. It cost the equivalent of $25. (The Internet did not lie when the article said Château DeFay wines were expensive.)

Although I hate to discourage the ambitions of any winemaker, the DeFays should probably have listened to the advice of Guatemala’s Ministry of Agriculture; they should have stuck to growing coffee instead planting grapes. And as far as my wife was concerned, maybe I should have refrained from searching out wineries in regions that have no hope of emulating Napa, Washington or Bordeaux.

Tony Aspler is the author of 17 books on wine, including his latest, Canadian Wineries.