Chile’s backstage winemakers

Some of the most influential winemakers in Chile are the least well known. Marcela Burgos meets them at some of Chile’s biggest companies.

Concha y Toro/Photo by Jorge Fernández Salas on Unsplash
Concha y Toro/Photo by Jorge Fernández Salas on Unsplash

Max Weinlaub, Viviana Magnere and Oscar Salas don’t appear in the wine press, or even at trade tastings; and yet they are the winemakers behind three of Chile’s most successful wine brands. Between them, they are responsible for 35% of Chile’s wine exports, equivalent to 20m 9-litre cases of wine.  

And in this difficult year, they will be forced to become even more innovative than usual.

Winemaking at scale

Such large-scale operations are far removed from the work of smaller wineries. But they are no less challenging to run, being complex, multi-factor businesses that require careful management. Above all, the logistics during the harvest period are highly critical because, however large the winery, its capacity is finite and needs to cope quickly and efficiently with millions of kilos of highly perishable grapes arriving in quick succession from a wide variety of sources. Every step needs to be managed efficiently, starting with the decision about when to pick the grapes, through to co-ordinating the transport of the harvest to the winery and all the subsequent steps after reception.

“You have to have a panoramic view of the operation, particularly during harvest, when there is a major opportunity cost if the logistics go wrong,” says Viviana Magnere, chief winemaker for Gato Negro, a major brand of the VSPT Wine Group. “The harvest period represents at least 50% of the annual work, so every year you have to be willing to run a marathon, as it were.”

Chile’s winemakers found the 2020 harvest challenging due to the extra complexity added by both a major drought the Covid-19 pandemic and social unrest. An early harvest was expected following a very dry year, so maintenance and seasonal recruitment were programmed in advance so the teams would be ready to start harvesting in the first or second week of February. Meanwhile, in view of the widespread expectation of anti-government protests re-commencing in March, contingency measures were taken, such as shift distribution and back-ups for key positions. While these measures weren’t planned with the pandemic in mind, they were the key to mitigating its effects. 

“We managed the same volume as last year, but instead of the normal 11-week harvest, the 2020 harvest was finished in a window of eight weeks,” explains Max Weinlaub, the chief winemaker at Concha y Toro’s Lontué plant who is responsible for the white wines of brands such as Casillero del Diablo, Sunrise and Frontera, as well as the Isla Negra label sold in the UK market. The challenges facing Weinlaub, and the range of options with which he has to work, are illustrated by the fact that Concha y Toro’s own vines in Chile cover 10,248 ha – one of the largest vineyard holdings in the world.

Traditionally the grapes for most Chilean entry-level wines have been sourced from the Entre Cordilleras areas of Chile’s Central Valley. Due to the increasing impact of climate change in these regions, however, the last two decades have seen a move to sourcing white grapes from coastal regions, such as Casablanca and Pumanque, or ones further south like Mulchén in Bío- Bío. Producers are searching for the moderate climate conditions that allow for freshness, aromas and the retention of acidity. 

Whatever the region, wineries need to retain strict control over the grapes and the way they are cultivated. Concha y Toro is not alone in growing its own. Santa Rita, with over 3,000ha of land, is a key player in the Maipo Valley, one of Chile’s top regions for Cabernet Sauvignon. It sources around 90% of the red wine grapes for its flagship 120 brand from its own land and 100% of its white grapes. Oscar Salas, chief winemaker for 120, explains that “using our own grapes allows us to supervise every stage in the vineyard, not only to maximize quality, but also to choose the best time to harvest.”

Salas, who studied viticulture and enology in Chile, worked at Cousiño Macul, Hartford Family Wines in Sonoma, Viña Sutil and Terra Andina before taking on his role at Santa Rita in 2016. Unusually for a winemaker, at Viña Sutil he was responsible for production and managing export sales to Europe and Asia. Doing both jobs, he says, gave him a “much broader and holistic perspective of the business, helping the company from my side to make relevant changes on relevant wine brands.”

Viticulturists like Salas understand that managing vineyards that deliver the kind of yields required for high-volume brands is not easy. Counter-intuitively, high-yield vineyards require special care. The challenge with growing at rates of 20 to 30 tons per hectare is to produce healthy grapes that retain varietal typicity. As with any vineyard, vineyard health is key to growing clean grapes, but the phytosanitary programmes for low-cost vineyards are inevitably weaker because of cost restrictions. Besides the standard chemical products, de-leafing tends to be among the techniques used in most vineyards because it not only aids with the penetration of the applications, but also provides good aeration that helps control the two most common vine diseases in Chile: oidium and botrytis. Vine training is especially critical, because high-yielding vineyards tend to make the clusters heavy and liable to compression, reducing airflow, and fostering the conditions for rot, as occurs with “parrón” (overhead) training.

Founded in 1865, VSPT Wine Group is now Chile’s second-largest wine exporting group, with six Chilean wineries – including San Pedro, Tarapacá, Leyda, Santa Helena, Misiones de Rengo and Viña Mar – as well as two - La Celia and Graffigna – on the other side of the Andes in Argentina. Unlike Concha y Toro and Santa Rita which are largely self-reliant, VSPT relies on several long-term grape supply contracts for the production of Gato Negro, a major brand of the portfolio of Viña San Pedro. 

Viviana Magnere who is in overall charge of every facet of production for Gato Negro, shares Oscar Salas’s experience in having been involved in selling wine as well as making it. Before joining San Pedro in 2014 she briefly worked in sales at Ventisquero.

She relishes the challenges of working in a large winery. “I wanted to work in a winery that highlights innovation in its day-to-day activities and has invested in different type of technologies in winemaking and vineyard management,” she says. Innovation is necessary, she continues. “When you are working with simpler grape materials, you have to constantly improve processes and efficiency, you must be very creative and it is necessary to innovate, research and develop new technologies.” 

As a result of collaborative research and development with the vineyard owners, Magnere and her team have successfully implemented a metre-high, opened-up Vertical Shoot Positioning (VSP) system that produces high yields while providing good aeration. Moreover, this training system allows mechanized pruning, hedging and harvesting, which, given labour scarcity in the Central Valley, is highly relevant in this price segment to reduce production costs.

Vinification challenges

There are two key challenges to vinifying industrial volumes of juice in million-litre vats. The first, which applies to whites, is to ensure that the juice is clean and has a certain level of turbidity (NTU), so it doesn’t become oxidised during the process. The second, which applies to both whites and reds, is to ensure a smooth fermentation. Yeast and nutrient selection decisions and temperature parameters are all designed to achieve a clean, quick and controlled fermentation. Above all, the full process is standardised, following a strict protocol. Any deviation that means a job has to be repeated or that entails something unexpected, means reduced quality and wasted time and therefore higher costs in a product with relatively low margins.

As Weinlaub, says “There is a common misperception about loss of control in big scale operations and massive volume labels. Moving such an amount of wines every time, you have to take in consideration that any mistake is costly in terms of quality and resources for the company. The more I know the facility and the vineyards, the more quality wines we can create at the lowest cost possible.”

Salas agrees. “Technical, creative and strategic decisions are extremely bonded to process and logistics.  This is what I do: check the present and project the future of the wines, tasting them and aiming for a quality target, all through a combined effort of bringing them into line with the marketing, commercial and business strategies.”

Considering that, at entry level, consistency of style is paramount and that as little as three months may elapse between the harvest and bottling, technology is increasingly used to standardise processes and reduce the time of operations. In the case of red wines, this technology is commonly seen in automated extraction methods and the preparation of oak alternatives – chips or powdered oak – as a “tea” to be added to the vats. However, producers are constantly looking for further opportunities to incorporate technology through self-regulating equipment and continuous processes.

The team at Concha y Toro is already anticipating that the 2021 vintage will also take place in the context of pandemic and that there will be less labour available, so they are working on initiatives such as using a nutrient injection to start the fermentation. “With this initiative, we expect to have more parameterized results and complete fermentations in 12 days with a variance of plus or minus one day, while today the reality is 15 days plus or minus five days,” says Weinlaub. 

But the human factor can never be entirely removed. Everything depends on the specific character of the vintage, Weinlaub says. “Fortunately for winemakers, wines can’t be made by excel spreadsheets. To make every single batch of wine I work with my team tasting dozens of samples until we agree ‘this is the blend...period’.”

Creativity, he says, is a fundamental part of the process. “For me oenology is like a multilayer cake: partly applied sciences – math, biology, chemistry, physics – and partly artistry and creativity, using colours, flavours and textures to create pleasure.”

Building brands

Chile’s global reputation for best-value wines has been built over time around the entry-level brands produced by its three largest players: Concha y Toro, VSPT Wine Group and Viña Santa Rita. 

Rodrigo Romero, chief marketing officer at VSPT Wine Group, explains that entry-level brands work with a marketing positioning based on emotional attributes; the Gato Negro brand, for example, aims to deliver a relaxed and happy experience to consumers who are not experts in wine and do not aspire to be. Similarly, four years ago, 120 underwent a re-positioning under the concept “La Vida 120” and became the first official wine partner of Arsenal FC, an alliance that closely resembled the deal signed between Casillero del Diablo and Manchester United football team in 2010. In both cases, the strategic partnership has allowed the brands to connect with consumers through a popular sport, rather than by directly communicating the functional attributes of the wine.

According to Romero, innovation plays a much more important role in the entry-level price segment and there is more freedom to push back the boundaries of the wine category. For example, Gato Negro has experimented in the spritzer segment and recently launched Gato Negro Alcohol Free, Gato Negro Low and Gato Negro Breeze, in response to the health & wellness trend.

Overall, the big company winemakers are professionals who must rise to the challenge of running an efficient, large-scale operation while providing a consistent wine. Their ability to manage vineyards scattered throughout Chile, forecast the season ahead and plan with a holistic approach are invaluable skills, particularly in a challenging year like 2020.  

Marcela Burgos

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