Buyer’s Guide to Vintages December 6th Release
John Szabo’s Vintages Buyers Guide December 6: 2025 Beverage Trends and Breaking Bread & Drinking Pinot with the Mapuche
By John Szabo MS, with notes from David Lawrason, Michael Godel and Sara d’Amato
“In 2025 Ontarians embraced the opportunity to discover something new amidst restrictions on U.S.-produced products, new points of sale, and innovative new product releases,” declares the LCBO media release in its annual look at consumers’ consumptions trends across the province. Canadian products, and especially Ontario wines, were the main beneficiaries of this topsy-turvy 2025 vintage, and we have a trio of top locals to recommend this week out of a supersized 163-product December 6 holiday release. Australian reds gained ground in eastern and southwestern Ontario, represented on our shopping list by a classic Coonawarra cabernet and a seductive GSM from the Clare Valley.
Italy and France were the other trend winners, especially with Toronto-based consumers, and as usual we have plenty to recommend from the world’s two largest wine producers. France gives us a half dozen picks, including several excellent “party” wine suggestions under $22 and a stunning, triple 94-point white Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Italy gives us three, two with double alignment: a polished Bolgheri Bordeaux-style beauty and a Barolo-quality nebbiolo at a Langhe nebbiolo price. The only quadruple alignment goes to an uncommonly good New Zealand sauvignon blanc. And elsewhere, I report on a brief trip to Chile last week to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Tayu, a collaborative project between Viña San Pedro and the indigenous Mapuche community of Buchahuieco in the Malleco Valley. It’s not just a lovely story, but also a lovely pinot noir, recommended in this release as well. Read on for the details and our two dozen picks.
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Snapshot of Ontario Beverage Trends
This past summer I reported on the impressive sales growth of Canadian wines in the first half of 2025. The trend has continued. An LCBO media release says: “In lieu of U.S.-produced wines, Ontario wines benefited from the strong customer sentiment to support local, with VQA sales increasing by +56%.” The increase was led mainly by Ontario red VQA (+66%) and Ontario white VQA (+54%). Demand for wines from Canada as a whole was up 19%. It will be interesting to see if the buy-local movement continues once U.S. wines are back on shelves.
The other main winners were Australia (+17%) — I’m sure a sigh of relief was heard down under after years of declining sales — as well as Italy (+10%) and France (+18%), particularly red wines.
Another trend, heard anecdotally around the world over the past couple of years, is that consumers are continuing to seek out fresher wine styles including lighter reds, sparklers and light wines. Lastly, de-alcoholized wines are well-nigh unstoppable in their growth in popularity, with sales up 126% in 2025. Let us know in the comments if you think WineAlign should be covering this growing category with more regularity.
Breaking Bread & Drinking Pinot Noir with the Mapuche: The Tayu Project
Pouring and passing the ceremonial quinoa beverage in Buchaheico. ©John Szabo
I spent last week in Chile at the invitation of the VSPT wine group (Viña San Pedro-Tarapacà), chiefly to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Tayu project, started in 2015. Tayu brings together the suitably cool climate of the Malleco Valley in southern Chile and pinot noir, a variety that has vastly improved in quality in the country over the last decade. But more significant than just making good wine, Tayu is also the first of its kind: a mutually beneficial collaboration between a major wine company and an indigenous community, the Mapuche of Buchahueico. I wrote about this project in 2021; see the article for the full story: Viña San Pedro’s Tayu: A Good Wine with an Even Better Back Story.
Pedro Izquierdo and the Buchaheico Lonco (elder) ©John Szabo
I was particularly interested in seeing the project in person to gain a fuller understanding of the collaboration and, of course, to taste the wine in situ. I was not disappointed. Our small group of Canadian writers was treated to a Mapuche welcome ceremony and traditional lunch in a ruca, the traditional thatched roof dwelling of these indigenous people, of which there are over one million living in Chile. The Spanish conquistadors never did manage to conquer the Mapuche. Unlike the Inca empire, which had one single absolute monarch called the Sapa Inca and considered a divine descendant of the sun god Inti, each Mapuche community has its own leader, an elder called the “Lonco,” and a spiritual elder called the Machi. The decentralized power and the particular fierceness of the Mapuche people made conquering them a dauting task.
Pouring and passing the ceremonial quinoa beverage in Buchaheico. ©John Szabo
As it is in Canada with the First Nations, the relationship between the Chilean people and the Mapuche is complicated. So, to see one of the country’s largest wine groups embark on such a collaborative project is unusual indeed. In fact, it was, and still is, the only one of its kind. “We thought we would see other companies come and replicate our model,” says Pedro Izquierdo, agricultural consultant for the VSPT Group and the person who dreamt up the collaboration over a decade ago. “But no one else has come yet. I’m not sure why.”
It’s not that the project isn’t working. On the contrary. What started out with just two families and five hectares of vineyards has grown to 11 families and 27.5 hectares, all planted to pinot noir. And it has also spilled over in the neighboring community of Hueicochico and two more families.
Toasting mote over the fire in a ruca in Buchahueico. ©John Szabo
The Chilean government provided grants and materials to establish the vineyards on Mapuche land, and San Pedro the additional loans needed to get the project up and running as well as the expertise to teach the Mapuche people how to farm grapes. San Pedro leases the land from each family on a 10-year contract, and produces the wine, one single bottling called Tayu, which means “ours” in Mapudungun. The first vintage was 2018.
Three families have already repaid the initial loan, with another two set to pay theirs off in 2026, which for San Pedro signals success, and for the families a degree of economic freedom. Once loans are repaid and the contract expires, each family is free to sell their grapes to any other company. “We will always be competitive,” says Izquierdo with a smile, referring to the price San Pedro is willing and able to pay for a kilo of grapes, far higher than the national average. And considering the emotional investment that has been made in the project, it’s hard to imagine these grapes ending up in another company’s vat.
Pedro Izquierdo at the Tayu Vineyard ©John Szabo
The goal behind the project is to provide reasonable livelihoods to the indigenous community and keep them together. Poverty is widespread and young people are left little choice but to leave the community and seek employment elsewhere. “We want to help keep families together and on their own land,” Izquierdo tells us. And from conversations over lunch with various members of the Buchaheico community, there is genuine pride in the work they are doing and a degree of gratitude for the opportunity.
It’s not without some risk, however. I ask one man whether there might be any push back from the more radical Mapuche that he and his family had “sold out” to the big Chilean company from Santiago. “There could be,” he responds with an unexpected degree of seriousness, although so far it has been peaceful. And there are plans to continue slowly expanding the project, incorporating more families and increasing production.
Viviana Navarrete is the winemaker responsible for Tayu, a pinot noir specialist and also chief winemaker for Viña Leyda, the group’s winery in the cool, coastal Leyda Valley where excellent pinot is grown along with sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and syrah. One of the more striking comments I recall from our interview in 2021 was how the fruit from Buchahueico is always some of the cleanest and healthiest she sees each year, a fact that she brings up again during the visit. “It’s amazing,” she says. “The pinot needs almost no sorting at the winery. It’s practically perfect.”
Another unexpected outcome is that the team from San Pedro has learned more from the Mapuche than they have taught. “There has been an interchange of culture that nobody expected,” Izquierdo says.
And Navarrete continues: “We have learned to respect the land, and nature, to an incredible degree.” Before each new planting, for example, a ceremony is performed to ask mother earth for permission to grow grapes on the land and use water. It’s similar to the ceremony we experience with the community, led by the Lonco, in which a quinoa-based beverage is poured and shared, including a few drops for mother earth and for the sacred tree in which the Mapuche flag flies.
Navarrete also recalls the first planting back in 2015: “We had planned to go down to Buchaheico during the work week to plant the first vines, you know, but the Lonco (community elder) said no way. ‘Our children, your children, your spouses, have to be here for the ceremony and to plant this land,’ he told us.” With the children obliged to travel far outside of the community for schooling during the week, it was only possible to plant on the weekend when they were back home. “So, we all brought down our kids and spouses for a weekend to plant vineyards,” she says with a laugh.
Navarrete sums it up: “We’re all passionate about the wine business, “but it’s particularly satisfying to be part of this project.”
Viviana Navarrete describes the soils and growing conditions in the Malleco Valley. ©John Szabo
Compared to the pinot from the Leyda Valley, the Tayu pinot from Malleco has a distinctly savoury, herbal taste, much like the wild scrub and forest that surrounds the vineyards on Mapuche land. The mainly granite-derived soils are deep red and rich in iron and quartz, also acidic, which Navarrete credits with “that iron freshness, the long and vibrant palate energy.” Parcels with more quartz show the “quartz effect,” wines with more grip on the palate, more “rustic tannins,” while tart red berry flavours predominate on the fruit side. In the end, a composite blend of all the parcels is made, and just one wine bottled.
Tayu vertical tasting 2018 to 2024. ©John Szabo
We tasted through all the vintages since the first in 2018 (no 2023 was made due to smoke taint from wildfires), and the latest, 2024, is the finest so far, with the 2021 in the best drinking shape now and an excellent wine in its own right. But you can taste for yourself; the 2024 was released on December 6.
Buyer’s Guide Vintages December 6: White
Greywacke Sauvignon Blanc 2024, Marlborough, New Zealand
$28.95, Connexion Oenophilia
Michael Godel – There is Marlborough sauvignon blanc and then there is Greywacke. May seem absurd to say that the greywacke bedrock is what you smell in this glass but go ahead, put your nose in, use imagination and let that be your guide.
David Lawrason – This is one of the most elegant, refined sauvignons of New Zealand — a category known mostly for electricity and intensity. This is calmer, cooler and more complex, with forward aromas of kiwi, subtle basil/bay leaf herbality, grapefruit rind and yellow pepper. It is medium weight, almost silky, delicate and dry.
John Szabo – Another fine sauvignon from Kevin Judd at Greywacke, with superior density and concentration. Its sweet-and-sour, spicy profile calls a ceviche to the table.
Sara d’Amato – An elevated and engaging sauvignon blanc, consistently well-crafted, and this vintage is no exception. Salty and mineral, with hint of lemon zest, pomelo and stony nuance. Poised and dry but not austere. Clean winemaking highlights its precision while a touch of friendly lees adds just the right sum of body.
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That’s all for this report, see you ’round the next bottle.
John Szabo, MS
Use these quick links for access to all of our December 6th Top Picks in the New Release. Non-premium members can select from all release dates 60 days prior.
John’s Top Picks – December 6th
Lawrason’s Take – December 6th
Michael’s Mix – December 6th
Sara’s Selections – December 6th
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