(This is the second part of my series on Peruvian Bodegas, click here to check out the first part.)
On our way to the next bodega, Lazo, Paolo remarked that the quality of their wines and piscos wasn’t as good as Lovera. When I asked him to elaborate, he merely shrugged and said (rather ominously), “You see.”
And see I did. Upon stepping out of the van at Lazo I got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, such as when you know you’re about to be in a really unpleasant situation and there is absolutely no way to escape it.
If Lovera seemed rustic, Lazo was bloody prehistoric. At the front of the bodega was a filthy lagar, over which was collapsed an ancient wooden press:
Lazo's lagar and wooden press
Walking past the lagar, we were treated to more of the bodega’s architectural prowess:
a cross-section of the architecture at Lazo
Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh, but I was quite dismayed upon looking around the grounds. It looked more like a place to party than a facility where wine and pisco was made – indeed, the derelict winemaking equipment seemed like mere afterthoughts. My trepidation increased another notch when I saw the alembique submerged beneath a vat of scummy green water. I was really not looking forward to trying the pisco.
Lazo's alembique. While it is common practice to use a tank of water to cool the equipment during distillation, this water had clearly been left stagnant for a really long time - my visit was in the middle of the growing season; winemaking had occurred over two months prior.
Passing the alembique, we arrived at the main area of the bodega – a large bar facing a few picnic benches, complete with a disco ball and Lazo’s mascot:
I felt the same way after tasting Lazo's booze
Lazo’s cellar / aging facility was also somewhat alarming, as it looked more like a storage shed for old junk than a place to store wine:
clay botijas and bottled pisco strewn amongst all manner of junk
Paolo informed us that the owner was a collector of “antiques.” Scattered amongst the bottles of pisco and wine was all manner of cobwebbed junk – an assortment of bicycle parts, rusty knives, hubcaps, broken furniture and even an old horse-drawn carriage.
After a brief tour, we found ourselves in a large shed rank with mold and cobwebs, facing an array of clay botijas with dirty rags stuffed in their necks. Our guide offered us a sample, and out of courtesy (and against our better judgment), we accepted. (Paolo had momentarily relieved himself of guide duty and was strolling behind us, peering at all the junk and ignoring the samples offered to him.)
The guide declared that we were trying “Vin Bourgogne.” Yeah, sure – this semi-sweet, Benylin-like concoction is about the farthest thing from Burgundy as you can get. After the first sip my throat immediately began closing up; it tasted rank and moldy. After we had departed Lazo, I mentioned this to my husband, and he confirmed experiencing a similar reaction – that wine was clearly contaminated with mold or fungus.
The second and third samples proved no different from the first. I was grateful when he pulled out a bottle of pisco; though it was hot and one-dimensional and burned all the way down, it also burned my throat clear again – I guess even crappy spirits have medicinal properties.
lazo grew a few grapevines, though they were just as unkempt as the rest of the bodega
Despite the terrible wine and dirty facility, I was still happy that we visited Lazo. It really gave perspective to the Peruvian wine industry, especially its recent achievements with table wines. Though the country is still dominated by small bodegas producing fairly low-quality wine and pisco, there are a handful of bodegas taking winemaking more seriously and making some pretty tasty stuff – as we were soon to find out.
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