El Maule, el talento de las viñas viejas y la reinvención estilística de Chile

Maule: The Magic of Old Vines and a Stylistic Reinvention in Chile

BY JOAQUÍN HIDALGO | JUNE 20, 2025

It’s a lovely morning in mid-April. The birds sitting in the espinillo trees chirp festively in the sun, as if they know that the dry season is coming to an end. In this landscape of ochre-hued rolling hills, the green vineyards at the end of the road almost seem like an anachronism.

Entering these vineyards, planted in the mid-1940s, instills a degree of reverence, not just because one feels the weight of history, but because the planting is so dense that it creates a solemn, sanctuary-like atmosphere. These dry-farmed vines, located at the bottom of a small valley, clearly still have water in their roots at the end of summer. One indicator would appear to be the well dug at the lowest point of the field. I salute the wisdom of past winegrowers. 

But when I get closer, see that it isn’t actually a well—it’s an old vat that was once used to make the wines from these vines. We’re in a remote settlement called Colin de Limávida, to the north of the Maule region, about 100 miles south of Santiago. A stone’s throw away,  the sometimes-powerful Mataquito River is a mere trickle at this time of year, bright and sinuous in the middle of a dry bed of pebbles.  

I came to this sunny outdoor aviary for a single reason. Every year, when I taste Chilean wines for this report, two wines in particular seem to have been sent from another universe: Miguel Torres’ Inquietos 01 and Reta’s Romelio, two Malbec-driven field blends that are both from this vineyard. These wines are sculpted by the granitic soils in the Cordillera de la Costa mountain range. The most important thing to note here isn’t the distinctiveness of the vineyard but what this site represents: a viticultural tradition with a long history that has spread into different corners of Chile, but particularly to the Maule and Itata regions. This tradition laid the groundwork for the rise of areas such as Apalta in the Colchagua Valley.

The old wine press at the center of the Colín de Limávida vineyard in Maule.

Mysterious, unique flavors continue to emerge wherever this history is found—among the old vines of Truquilemu or Sauzal, for example, or in the liqueur-like reds from Cauquenes (including another wine that seduces me every year, the Undurraga Field Blend). One also finds old vines on the slopes of San Nicolás and Coelemu in Itata, Ñuble, and further south to the shores of the Bíobío River. Each of these old vineyards represents a distinctive sense of place, giving rise to with rural whites and reds that evoke workhorses, rough hands and shoes covered in mud during the rainy pruning season. 

It’s very easy to get carried away and declare that this bucolic world, with its simple methods, produces the truest, most authentic Chilean wines. In fact, most of the producers from these areas claim precisely that. But many of the labels that tout this heritage seem to be more concerned with demonstrating their authenticity than making good wines. The region’s wine industry has begun to address that disconnect. Whereas a few years ago it was more important to represent the concept of guaso (wines made in the traditional manner, pressed through sieves and fermented in clay), today, the better producers prioritize making quality wines. It’s an encouraging trend, especially in Southern Maule.  

Maule and Beyond

When discussing wine in Chile, it’s easy to lose sight of the human dimension. It’s a matter of contrasts: in Maipo, the industrial machine is the dominant voice and casts its shadow over regions such as Maule, Itata and Biobío. In Itata and Biobío, winemaking developed as a complement to agriculture, adding variety to the cultivation of grains, fruit or forestry. This pattern dates back to colonial times when the Biobío River was the final frontier. The divide here is hierarchical: big international business versus rural farmers.

Today, however, there is more dialogue between the two worlds, and that’s good news. In the current climate, where big business needs to find ways to renew itself to attract an increasingly refractory market, the sharpest minds are paying attention what’s going on in the far south of the country. With the exception of Puento Alto (the most famous subregion of Maipo) and the Chilean coast (which I’ll cover later this year), the most interesting Chilean wines to look out for right now are made south of the Central Valley. This region is now combining technical expertise with a deeply rooted viticultural heritage.

A century-old País vine in Maule.

The Maule and Ñuble regions run from 100 to 250 miles south of Santiago. Maule is the largest winemaking region in Chile, with about 52,000 hectares under vine, two-thirds of which are red varieties. Ñuble is the next region to the south, with 10,000 hectares of vineyards, including the famous Itata Valley. Maule and Ñuble have quite unique terroirs. In the dry-farmed Secano Interior (under the rain shadow of the Cordillera de la Costa), one finds century-old vineyards of País (also known as Listán Prieto) sometimes grafted with Carignan or Cinsault, in addition to varieties such as Muscatel, San Francisco and Chasselas. This area is home to VIGNO, one of the most innovative recent initiatives to appear in the country. By contrast, in irrigated areas of the Central Valley (first planted in the mid-1980s), there are numerous productive vineyards of Carménère, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot that yield fruit-forward wines.

I’ve toured a large part of these southerly regions on my numerous trips to Chile. The landscape of sleepy villages (with the exception of Talca and Chillán) can shift from native forests to plantations, from meadows to fields of grain, from market gardens to vineyard-covered slopes. The most intriguing areas share a mixture of granite and clay soils that allow for dry-farming. Since this sunny region gets very hot in summer, producers increasingly value the opportunity to dry-farm Mediterranean varieties, offering a distinctive profile in a sea of Bordeaux-style reds.These varieties are more resistant to the sun and have a different sense of place, presenting aromas of pomegranate and wild cherry and unique tannin structures.