Viña Ochotierras

The winery

Ochotierras began in 1993, when its first fine-wine vineyards were planted in the bed of the Limarí River, across from the village of the same name, about 11 km west of Ovalle on Ruta D-505 and some 30 km from the coast. In its early years it was a grape-growing venture; since 2005 it has bottled its own wines, in small volumes and with much of the work done by hand: picking, sorting the bunches and pressing. The winery was built below ground level so that part of the process moves the wine by gravity and uses fewer pumps, and it works with small-capacity tanks.

The valley is semi-arid, with less than 100 millimeters of rain a year, plenty of light and the camanchaca, the fog that rolls in from the Pacific in the mornings and lifts toward midday. The vines, trained on a simple vertical trellis over sandy loam soils and drip-irrigated, are Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Carménère, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, with yields of 6,000 to 8,000 kilos per hectare. The collection comes in four lines: the Chardonnay Reserva; the Reserva Especial, with a Cabernet Sauvignon and a single-vineyard blend of Cabernet and Syrah; the Reserva Privada, Carménère and Syrah with 10 to 12 months in French oak; and the Gran Reserva, which spends 14 to 18 months in barrel and adds up to some 17,000 bottles a year, hand-numbered and sealed with wax. The two Gran Reserva wines carry in their names the barrels they were born from: the Syrah 10 Barricas, a line started in 2009, and the 24 Barricas, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Carménère. In 2025 the winery added a Syrah Limited Edition from the 2020 vintage, with 498 bottles.

The winery and its shop are open Monday to Friday, 8:30 to 17:30. If you are passing through, you can take the Visita Express free of charge and without booking, a guided walk of about 15 minutes through the winery with an explanation of how the wines are made. The Visita Premium, about two hours long, covers the winery and the vineyards, goes over the estate's history and ends with a tasting of two wines served with a board of valley produce, such as goat cheese and nuts; it costs CLP 20,000 per person, requires a minimum of four people and is booked 24 hours ahead with full payment, through the form on the website or by WhatsApp. The winery announces no restaurant or accommodation. Its wines are sold at the shop or in the online store, which ships to the regions in six-bottle cases and assorted packs.