Cavas del Valle

The winery

Cavas del Valle was born in 1996, when geologist Raymundo Piracés and economist María Luisa Duerr left Santiago to plant vines in the upper Elqui Valley, an area known until then for pisco and table grapes, where nobody associated wine with elevations above 1,000 meters. That pioneering bet is still a family project. The winery operates in a nineteenth-century adobe manor house that Raymundo restored himself: its walls, about 80 centimeters thick, keep the underground cellar cool, and that is where the wine is made, stored and sold, beside Ruta D-485, one kilometer before Montegrande.

The vineyards are at about 1,100 meters, in a semi-arid climate of long summers, very dry air and barely 60 millimeters of rain a year. The estate works without agrochemicals: it fertilizes with compost made from pomace and sheep manure, controls weeds naturally and irrigates by drip. Its flagship grapes are Syrah, planted in 1996, and Moscatel Rosada, the valley's traditional grape, from which it makes a dry white, an aromatic sweet wine, the late-harvest Cosecha Otoñal, picked between late May and early June, an unfiltered orange wine and two sparkling wines. The list is rounded out by the young Roca Negra reds, a Malbec Reserva with six months in French oak, a Syrah Gran Reserva with eighteen months in oak and a Malbec rosé of just 7.5% alcohol. They produce around 25,000 bottles a year, sold mostly direct and exported in small lots to Germany, Switzerland, England and Bolivia.

The manor house opens every day and has a wine shop; bottles start at CLP 8,500 and can also be ordered by WhatsApp, with shipping within Chile and abroad. The winery offers four visits, all booked ahead by WhatsApp, email or the form on its website: the Tour Tradicional goes through the house, explains the winemaking and ends with three wines on a pergola overlooking the valley; the Tour Privado, designed for small groups, pours four wines, including the premium lines; the Masterclass with the winemaker covers terroir, Elqui grape varieties, pairing and tasting technique over five wines; and the Tour Premium adds the vineyard, a vertical tasting, a country lunch of local produce and a bottle to take home. Prices are not published, so ask when you book. Beside the house there is a terrace over a lagoon ringed by willows, and the winery also hosts exhibitions, concerts on the pergola and artist residencies.