Casas de Bucalemu

The winery

Casas de Bucalemu was born in 2008 in the Bucalemu area, in the municipality of Santo Domingo, the strip of the Leyda Valley closest to the sea; its wines carry the Rocas de Santo Domingo appellation, within the San Antonio Valley. It is a family project headed by Renato Peñafiel, with Anita Peñafiel in charge of the commercial side and winemaker Cristóbal Undurraga, founder of Koyle, as technical director. The winery presents itself alongside a colonial manor house with verandas, a chapel and palm trees, and speaks of 470 years of tradition on this land, once part of the old Bucalemu hacienda, held by the Jesuits for much of the colonial period; the label on its red reproduces an old engraving of the Jesuit novitiate house at Bucalemu. It belongs to the Asociación de Viñas del Valle de San Antonio, the valley's winery association.

The vineyards are only 9 kilometers from the coast, on gentle hills surrounded by native forest and pastures where the estate's horses graze. The climate is cold and maritime, and the soils mix clays with ancient seabeds rich in calcium carbonate and fossils; the winery reports organic management and low yields, around one kilo per vine. The wines are made in concrete eggs, barrels and French oak foudres (large casks). Salinas, the Sauvignon Blanc, takes its name from the Bucalemu salt flats, which supplied Santiago with salt in colonial times, and brings together grapes from three blocks with different soils, aged a year on the lees. Fósiles is a foot-trodden Pinot Noir aged in foudres, and the red Casas de Bucalemu, from the Maitenlahue vineyard, is a coastal Cabernet Franc (in 2018 it also included Syrah) of which some 2,300 bottles are made. The Ediciones Limitadas add a Riesling with 46 months in barrel and an orange wine of Riesling with 90 days of skin contact.

The winery publishes no visits, tours or tastings, and has no online shop either: order the wines by writing to the sales team on WhatsApp or at ventas@casasdebucalemu.cl. A good chance to taste them is at the valley's gatherings, such as the Fiesta de la Vendimia del Valle de San Antonio (the valley's harvest festival), which in 2025 brought the association's wineries together at Hacienda San Juan, Casas de Bucalemu among them. The critics have followed its latest vintages closely: Descorchados, Tim Atkin and James Suckling give between 93 and 95 points to Salinas, Fósiles and the red Casas de Bucalemu.