Gandolini

The winery

Viña Gandolini is the personal project of winemaker Stefano Gandolini, born in Chile in 1966 and trained as an agronomist at the Universidad Católica and as a winemaker in Piacenza and Bordeaux. According to El Mercurio, it all started in 2001, when he persuaded his father to buy a property in the Buin area to plant it with Cabernet Sauvignon. The winery was founded in 2011, the year of the first harvest, with his partner Fernando Izquierdo Menéndez, and the wine reached the market in 2014. Before that, Gandolini was head winemaker at wineries of the Morandé and Santa Rita groups, such as Carmen and Doña Paula, and he is also a partner and head winemaker at Ventolera, in Leyda. The estate presents itself above all as a family project: the wine's name recalls his grandmother, his mother and his wife, all three named María.

It works 70 ha in the Maipo Andes D.O., at about 450 m above sea level, spread over three vineyards in the Buin district: Alto Jahuel, Cerrillo and Catemito, planted in 2001, 2003 and 2005 with massal selection, at 7,000 vines per hectare and with drip irrigation. They sit on alluvial terraces 3 and 4 of the Maipo River, the oldest ones, with soils in which 40 to 60% of the volume is stones. From there comes Las 3 Marías Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon, a limited production that in the 2019 vintage is 95% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Petit Verdot and 2% Cabernet Franc, aged in new French oak barrels: the website speaks of 21 to 24 months and the technical sheet for that vintage of 32. The website says the winery makes a single wine, but in September 2026 La Bottega Gandolini announced a new label of its own, Divina Vendimia. The olive trees on the same property give the oil the family uses.

The winery publishes no visits, tours or opening hours, and its website offers only a contact form. The address on its export records is Fundo Hacienda Chada, Camino Huelquén, in Paine; the exact property is not published, so the map marks only the locality of Chada. The wine is sold in the store at gandolini.com, where the 2019 vintage costs CLP 180,000 and the wooden case of six bottles CLP 1,080,000. To taste it there is La Bottega Gandolini, the Italian restaurant run by Stefano's nephews, at Av. Alonso de Córdova 2335, Vitacura, about 56 km from Chada as the crow flies: its wine list of November 2025 offers nine vintages between 2011 and 2020, from CLP 110,000 to CLP 550,000 a bottle, and the 2020 by the glass at CLP 20,000. The phone number and email on this profile are the restaurant's, the only public ones for the brand.