Viña Villalobos

The winery

Villalobos was born in the Valle de los Artistas (Artists' Valley) of Lolol, a community where sculptors, painters and printmakers have their homes and studios deep in the dry-farmed countryside of Colchagua. Sculptor Enrique Villalobos settled there with his bronze foundry, together with his wife, ceramicist Rita Encina, and their sons Martín, Alejandro and Rolando. Near the hamlet of Ranguilí, a few kilometers from the valley, the family owned a farm with an old Carignan vineyard planted in the 1940s and 1950s that nobody tended: for some sixty years the vines grew without pruning, irrigation or chemicals, tangled with maitén, culén and espino trees, rosehip and brambles, and many climbed up into the trees. In 2007 the family made a first wine for themselves and their friends, and 2009 brought the first commercial vintage. The winery was born in Enrique's sculpture studio.

The vineyard is still treated as a forest. The family's horses do the farm work, fertilize between the vines and, by eating the shoots, take the place of pruning; no tractors are used. Harvest is by hand, among thorn bushes and sometimes with a ladder, and family and friends get it done in about three days. In the cellar the wines ferment with native yeasts, without filtering or pressing, settling by gravity, and with just a small dose of sulfites at bottling. The flagship wine is Silvestre, a Carignan that rests about 18 months in old French oak barrels; it is joined by Lobo, a Carménère from a trellised vineyard in Lolol, Nativa, a País from old vines, and wines such as Zorrito Salvaje (Cinsault and País), Conejo (Semillón) and Costino (Cabernet Sauvignon). Silvestre was named Best Carignan in Chile by the Descorchados guide in 2011 and 2012, and the same guide singled out Villalobos as the revelation vineyard of the Colchagua Valley.

Villalobos does not publish a tourist visiting program, and South America Wine Guide lists it among the boutique wineries of Colchagua that are not open to tourism, so check directly with the family before going. Its wines have been sold through its own online store, in some wine shops and restaurants in Santiago and abroad, in markets such as the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and the United States. The most direct channel for finding out where to get them is its Instagram account, @villaloboswine.