At Wine School, we think that consumers must decide for themselves how much of a priority wine will be, and how much effort they are willing to expend, both in acquiring wines and in understanding them. We also believe that the joy and pleasure wine can provide is a reward that goes far beyond the labor extended.

Each month, I select a particular wine and suggest three good examples for you to drink and think about. For the last few weeks we have been focusing on cinsaults from the Itata Valley region of Chile. Here are the three wines I recommended:

Rogue Vine Itata Valley Grand Itata Tinto 2016; A Los Viñateros Bravos Itata Valley Granítico Cinsault 2016 and Pedro Parra y Familia Secano Interior Itata Pencopolitano 2017.

These wines are by no means typical of the fruity Chilean reds the world has come to know, nor are they meant to be. Even as intrepid growers are exploring new territories, some at inconceivably high altitudes in the foothills of the Andes, most Chilean wines still come from the Central Valley, comprising a series of smaller valleys south of the capital city, Santiago.

Excellent wines have been made there, no doubt, but most of the effort from the big companies that dominate Chile’s wine industry has gone into pleasant, reliable wines from relatively familiar grapes.

South of the Central Valley and closer to the city of Concepción, however, are regions like Itata Valley and Bío Bío, where wine has been made for generations almost entirely for local consumption. Here are the old vineyard treasures, generally composed of grapes that wine authorities of previous generations deemed ignoble, like país, known in English as mission, carignan, muscat and cinsault.

These are grapes that came centuries ago with European missionaries, and have been part of the local tradition ever since, planted in cold, wet coastal areas or on foothills in the interior. These old vineyards were planted without modern wire trellising and tended without irrigation. Instead, the vines were trained into upright, goblet shapes, known in French as gobelet and in English as bush vines.

These old bush-vine vineyards, especially those planted in granite soils, are the cherished objects of desire of a new generation of wine producers like Leonardo Erazo, a partner in both Rogue and Bravos, and Pedro Parra, a Chilean geologist who consults with winemakers all over the world, but has a special affinity for the potentially great terroirs of his home territory.