Viña Valdivieso

The winery

Viña Valdivieso was born in 1879 as Champagne Valdivieso, when Alberto Valdivieso began making sparkling wines in Santiago using the traditional method of bottle fermentation, from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines brought over from Europe. The house presents itself as the first sparkling wine producer in Chile and in South America. During the 20th century it added still wines, which are made at the Lontué winery, in the municipality of Molina. Today the company is called Viña Valdivieso S.A. and belongs to Grupo Valdivieso, together with Licores Mitjans.

The house works in two places: the sparkling wines are made at its Santiago plant and the still wines in Lontué; the head office, at Juan Mitjans 200, Macul, is about 185 km in a straight line from the Lontué winery. In Lontué, in the Curicó Valley at 200 m above sea level, it has some 120 hectares on alluvial clay-loam soils, planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Carménère and Sauvignon Blanc. It also has vineyards in Limarí, Apalta, Maipo, Pirque and Sagrada Familia, where the Punta de Rosa estate preserves Cabernet Franc planted in 1900, and it takes part in VIGNO with a dry-farmed Carignan from Melozal, from vines more than 60 years old. Its icon wine is Caballo Loco, a blend born in Lontué in the 1990s: half of each edition is held back to be blended into the next, in a system inspired by the solera, so that every bottle brings together more than 30 years of harvests. The catalog also includes traditional-method and Charmat-method sparkling wines, such as Limited and Dolce, the Varietal, Winemaker Reserva, Valley Selection Gran Reserva and Single Vineyard lines, and the Caballo Loco Grand Cru collection, with wines from different valleys. The winemaking team is headed by Brett Jackson, at the winery since 2001.

Neither the winery nor the Ruta del Vino de Curicó (the Curicó Wine Route), which lists it among its member wineries, currently publishes tours, hours or prices for visiting Lontué, and Enoturismo Chile does not list it; if you want to see the cellar, ask first by phone at (75) 247 1000. Its wines and sparkling wines can be bought at tiendavaldivieso.cl and in supermarkets.