Pino Román

The winery

Pino Román is the personal project of Ignacio Pino Román, a winemaker born in Doñihue, in the O'Higgins Region. He studied agronomy and winemaking in Temuco, worked three years in vineyards in New Zealand, California and Portugal, and in 2016 settled in the Itata Valley, where two years later he began making his own wines. He has no vineyards: he buys grapes from small growers in Coelemu and Trehuaco, with whom he works in collaboration. In 2021 he was making wine in an old cellar in the Tinajacura area of Coelemu, coming off a season of around 12,000 bottles. That year, the Descorchados Chile 2022 guide, by journalist Patricio Tapia, named him breakthrough winemaker of the year.

The vines are old and grow without irrigation, on high ground with sea breezes. The Tinto País, the label that caught Descorchados' attention with its 2020 vintage, comes from Los Pellines, in Trehuaco. Export sheets describe that source as a vineyard of around three hectares belonging to Eliana Sanhueza, at 161 m above sea level, with own-rooted vines more than 60 years old on granite. The grapes are destemmed, ferment in an open tank with no added yeasts and rest ten months in stainless steel. The Blanco Semillón comes from the Caravanchel and El Roble vineyards and ferments partly on its skins. The line is completed by a Naranjo, an orange wine of Moscatel de Alejandría that ferments and rests in amphora on its skins, a País Pét-Nat and a Pipeño, a rustic country wine, of Moscatel, País and Cinsault. The still wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered, and the País and the Semillón carry a small dose of sulfites.

For now, the way to get to know them is the bottle. No visits, wine shop, website, phone or email are published, and the map pin marks only the locality of Tinajacura, not a cellar open to the public; a back label from the 2024 vintage also gives Trehuaco as the place of production. In Chile, Brotherwood La Tienda sells the Tinto País and the Blanco Semillón at CLP 25,000 a bottle (November 2026). Abroad they can be found at Systembolaget, in Sweden, and have passed through shops in the United States and Canada.