Viña La Fortuna

The winery

Viña La Fortuna is the winery of the Güell family in Sagrada Familia, in the heart of the Curicó Valley. According to the history told on its website, now offline, Modesto Güell Coll, from a Spanish winegrowing family, bought the La Fortuna estate in 1942 and planted Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Sauvignon Blanc. His son Daniel Güell Galofré built in the late 1940s the cellar still in use, 6,500 m² with concrete vats and stainless steel tanks, and since 1950 the house's wines have been sold in Chile; among its commercial innovations were the single-serve “fortunita” bottle and the Burgundy-style bottle. In the early 1990s the third generation, with Luis Daniel Güell Borlando, opened the winery to export, and in 1996 laid the groundwork for its conversion to organic farming, a step the winery presents as the first by any Chilean winery. Today the fourth generation, with Macarena Concha Güell, is betting on natural wines made with yeasts from the vineyard and very little sulfite.

The vineyards exceed a hundred hectares (the English version of the site speaks of 140) and bring together Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Carménère, Malbec and Pinot Noir among the reds, and Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc among the whites. According to that site they were managed without agrochemicals, with organic certification from IMO in Switzerland and, since April 2010, the Fairtrade seal from FLO in Germany, whose premium per exported case funds social projects designed by the workers themselves; the winery also holds HACCP and a Clean Production Agreement. Its last published catalog (2019) arranged the wines in two lines: Reserva, with Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Carménère, and Estate, with seven varietals. The organic Carménère Reserva 2013 won a silver medal and 91 points at Decanter Asia 2016, and the Cabernet Sauvignon Reserva 2011 a gold medal at Catad'Or Chile 2013.

La Fortuna is above all an exporting winery: according to its site, its customers are in Germany, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden and the United States. It does not appear in Enoturismo Chile or the Ruta del Vino de Curicó and publishes no tours, tastings or visit prices, so call before going. The phone number the winery itself gives out, which also appears on Google Maps, is +56 75 247 1023; the cellar is at Fundo La Fortuna, Camino a la Costa 901, in Sagrada Familia. Its website stopped working around 2022, so the details in this profile come from the last archived version (2019) and remain to be confirmed with the winery.