Vitivinícola Estación Yumbel

The winery

Vitivinícola Estación Yumbel, which presents itself on social media as Agrícola Estación Yumbel, is the project of Mauricio González and Daniela Tapia in Santa Rosa de Choigüe, a rural sector of the municipality of Yumbel, in the dry-farmed interior of the Biobío. Mauricio, an agronomist and winemaker trained at the Universidad Católica, spent close to ten years at modern wineries in Chile and Mendoza; he came to Yumbel looking for old-vine fruit for another project, and in 2015 the couple bought a farm with a small winery to make wine in the local country style. Daniela, an engineer, left the café she had in Santiago to join him and runs the business side. Besides wine, the farm produces honey and eggs from country hens.

They work about four hectares of their own bush vines, unirrigated and without agrochemicals, on volcanic, sandy soils. The oldest are País and are over two hundred years old; in 2015 they grafted Malbec and Carignan onto old País vines, and they also make wine from old vineyards they rent or from neighbors. The grapes ferment with native yeasts in open raulí-wood lagares (treading vats) and the wine is aged in pipas (casks) of the same wood, in steel or in clay tinajas (amphorae), unfiltered and unfined, with little or no sulfites. The best known is the Pipeño de País (pipeño being the rustic young country wine of the south); alongside it are the País Juana Rosa, the Moscatel de Alejandría Tinaja, aged on its skins in amphorae, and a Malbec. According to their importer in the United States they make around 18,000 bottles a year, a good share of it for export (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan), and the Descorchados guide has scored their wines between 92 and 96 points.

The Cartografía Vitivinícola del Biobío (the region's wine map) lists a guided visit of the winery and vineyards, with an explanation of how wine is made in lagares and tinajas, and a tasting. The winery publishes no price, duration or hours: visits are arranged in advance by phone, email or Instagram message. It has no online shop or active website, so the most direct way to buy its wines is to write to them.