La Falca de Albarracín

The winery

La Falca de Albarracín is the label under which the Albarracín family bottles its Pintatani, the traditional wine of the Codpa Valley, an oasis at about 1,850 meters above sea level in the municipality of Camarones, some 110 km from Arica. The estate has belonged to the family for more than three generations: it began in the Bodega sector, at the head of the valley, where the oldest vines grew, and later moved to the center of the village without changing its name. According to the family, falca is the Quechua word for a still, and Albarracín recalls the brothers Ignacio and Thomás, among the last muleteers who loaded the wine into clay jugs (botijas) and oak quarter-casks for a fourteen-day journey through Belén, Putre and Socoroma to the nitrate works and the port of Arica.

The family keeps century-old País vines, head-trained (bush vines) and irrigated by gravity with water from the Vitor River. Pintatani is made the old way: the grapes are sun-dried (asoleado) to concentrate their sugar, trodden by foot in a stone lagar (treading vat), and nowadays aged in oak barrels, which helps stabilize the wine before bottling. The result is a sweet wine sold in 750 ml bottles, poured by the glass at the family restaurant and shipped all over Chile by arrangement over WhatsApp. In 2024 the village's producers, twelve according to the family out of the fifty or so there once were, formed the Asociación Gremial de Productores de Vino Pintatani de Codpa (the Codpa Pintatani wine producers' association), and this label was born within it, taking first place in the Mosto category at the 2025 Vendimia de Codpa harvest festival.

The family home, on the corner of San Martín and La Candelaria, doubles as a general store and restaurant, Punto Cortes de Marcelina, with a home-style menu that changes every day and valley dishes such as calapurca (a hearty stew). From there, with a booking by WhatsApp, you can arrange a route through the old vines, the winery with its stone lagares and the old mule-train trails, ending with a Pintatani tasting, or a half-day outing around Codpa that takes in the church of San Martín de Tours, the museum, the Ofragía petroglyphs and three artisanal wineries, closing at Quinta Santa Elena. Every May the village celebrates the Fiesta de la Vendimia, the harvest festival organized by the Municipality of Camarones: it is the busiest season for visitors, so book well ahead.