Past Presence

Chile’s traditional-winemaking revival is bringing a new generation back to the future.

- Max Allen

Manuel Moraga Gutiérrez is a seventh-generation winemaker in the Bío Bío Valley in southern Chile. He harvests grapes from the vines his great-great-grandfather planted in 1776, and makes his wines in essentially the same way his ancestors did. The ancient, pre-phylloxera plantings of red país and white Moscatel vines grow big and strong in the rich volcanic soil, with no need for irrigation.

The país is wild fermented in simple fashion: the grapes are de-stemmed and crushed into a large, 120-year-old vat made from a local beechwood called raulí, and the fruit is foot-stomped daily to extract colour and flavour, then bottled soon after fermentation, with no filtration and no SO2 preservative.

The result is a light, bright, super-juicy red wine called pipeño, designed to be drunk young. The name refers to the pipas – huge old raulí barrels, traditionally used in Chile. It’s honest, rustic wine of the people, drunk locally with gusto. Moraga is the first in his community to sell his pipeño commercially, in convivial one-litre bottles, under the Cacique Maravilla label.