Viña Zaranda

The winery

Viña Zaranda is on Fundo La Herencia, in the Guarilihue area of the municipality of Coelemu, among the dry-farmed hills of the Itata Valley. The Fuentealba family arrived on this land in the early twentieth century, and around the 1920s the estate passed to Nestorina del Tránsito, the family's great-grandmother, who oversaw the planting of the first vines. The grapes were sold in bulk for years, until in 2011 the cook and sommelier Juan Ignacio Acuña, of the third generation, settled on the farm with his family and began bottling under his own name; the winery's website also named the winemaker Catalina Ugarte. In 2022 Zaranda was one of the six founding wineries of Sur Natural, the association of small natural-wine producers from Itata and Biobío.

The vines, head-trained on gentle slopes, are worked the traditional way, with horses and oxen for plowing. The winery sums up its work as dry-farmed criolla grapes (the old heritage varieties) with minimal intervention: Moscatel de Alejandría, Cinsault and País as the base, joined by Corinto, also known as Chasselas, and Semillón. It ferments with native yeasts and since 2017 has made its wines in its own twelve-thousand-liter cellar, with stainless steel tanks and French and American barrels. Its Corinto 2019 was named "Best Value White of the Year" in Tim Atkin's 2020 Chile report. In 2023 the winery said its nursery in Guarilihue had already propagated 0.4 hectares of Trousseau and that it was starting a collaborative project with criolla grapes.

Zaranda does not publish a visiting program with prices. Enoturismo Chile lists it with a tour and tasting, tapas or a paired lunch, and a wine shop, by booking only, in Spanish, French and English, for groups of no more than 10 people between November and March. Its website is offline and its Instagram has not posted since November 2023, so confirm before going with Juan Ignacio Acuña, at +56 9 9872 6877 or contacto@zaranda.cl. The wines can be bought online from Winelivery, a store in Ñuble that ships throughout Chile and offers the Moscatel, País and Cinsault.