The Southern Cross & the Andean Hand

The story of Bodegas Chakana begins with Juan Pelizzatti — a former electrical engineer who worked in telecommunications before surrendering to a deeper calling. His family hails from Valtellina, a historic wine region in the Italian Alps near the Swiss border, where his grand uncle owned a winery during the 20th century. His father came to Argentina after the Second World War and established himself as a construction engineer, but the winemaking bloodline ran silent for a generation. For Juan, founding Chakana was not merely a career change but a reconnection with ancestral roots and with nature itself — a way to heal the rupture of migration through the ancient ritual of agriculture.

The winery was founded on May 2, 2002 — a date chosen with cosmic precision. Chakana is the name given to the Southern Cross constellation by the indigenous peoples of the Andean highlands — a symbol that guided the agricultural calendar of pre-Hispanic civilisations and served as a compass, calendar and spiritual link between earth and sky. On that May evening in 2002, the Chakana reached perfect vertical position in the sky, marking the beginning of a new farming cycle. Pelizzatti chose the name to honour the Incan understanding of nature's reciprocity — the belief that agriculture is not extraction but exchange.

At first, Pelizzatti approached winemaking from the perspective of a passionate wine lover. But as the project developed, he recognised the cultural and sacred value of agriculture — that wine is not merely a consumer good but an expression of an intimate relationship with a place and its nature. This drove him to seek a more holistic approach. In 2012, under the guidance of the late Alan York — an American pioneer of biodynamics with a fiercely empirical approach — Chakana converted to organic farming. Pelizzatti then spent a year in the United Kingdom at Schumacher College, the renowned institution dedicated to holistic thinking and ecology, completing a master's course in ecological agriculture that transformed his understanding of his role in society. Chakana became fully biodynamic and Demeter-certified in 2015/2016, and has since added vegan, non-GMO and Fair for Life certifications — becoming the only non-GMO certified winery in Argentina and a beacon of regenerative viticulture in South America.

The cellar philosophy of Bodegas Chakana is deceptively simple: "just grapes". Winemaker Gabriel Bloise — whose wines have been praised by Jeb Dunnuck as getting "better with every vintage" — has worked harvests in Tuscany, California, Priorat and Australia, but his approach at Chakana is one of radical restraint. The guiding principle is that higher quality fruit demands minimum intervention in the winery to create truly enjoyable wines that challenge the established criteria of manipulation. Spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts. Natural acidity preserved. Minimum or no sulfur. No clarification or filtration for the natural wines. Locally adapted varieties. And above all, a rejection of the small new-oak barrel regime that has come to define industrial Argentine winemaking.

For the Nuna range — the estate's organic, biodynamic, vegan expressions from Finca Nuna — the approach is spontaneous and pure: grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed, and fermented with their own native yeasts in stainless steel or concrete. The wines are unclarified, preserving the raw, living texture of the fruit. The Sobrenatural range pushes this further into zero-sulfite territory: no additions, no tampering, no preservatives — the only ingredient is biodynamic grape. The Ayni range, by contrast, explores the tertiary complexity of large oak: the Malbec and Gravas are aged for 12 to 18 months in 5,000-litre German oak foudres and 500-litre barrels, untoasted, allowing the wine to develop savoury depth and spice without the vanilla or toast of new French barriques. The Ayni Sparkling — a Blanc de Noir from Pinot Noir made by the traditional champenoise method and aged 18 months on lees — is the only Demeter-certified sparkling wine in Argentina.

The estate's commitment to skin contact, whole cluster and alternative ageing vessels reflects a broader natural wine philosophy. The whites undergo long, gentle maceration to give texture and depth, but no noticeable oak flavours are evident because of the use of large foudres and unlined concrete tanks. The reds are fermented in concrete pools where temperature and extraction are managed by gravity and patience rather than pumps and enzymes. Across all ranges, the goal is terroir transparency — a refusal to homogenise the distinct voices of Agrelo and Altamira into a single, anonymous style. As Pelizzatti says: "Conventional wine suits only industrial purposes and not people's desires."

Bodegas Chakana is not merely a winery; it is a proof that an electrical engineer from Valtellina, armed with a Schumacher College education and a 45-degree alignment with the Viracocha line, can build one of Argentina's largest premium exporters while remaining one of its most radical natural wine advocates. In an era when Mendoza is dominated by industrial scale and corporate consolidation, Chakana has demonstrated that biodynamics is a viable philosophy at any scale — that the same Agrelo soil can produce both a 150,000-case portfolio and a zero-sulfite pet-nat, that the same Paraje Altamira vineyard can yield both a 97-point Decanter Platinum Malbec and an unclarified vegan Bonarda, and that a single winery can speak the language of large foudres and concrete pools while exporting to 33 countries.

The legacy of Chakana is the legacy of the dissenting hand in viticulture. Where conventional Argentine winemaking pursues high yields, new oak and homogenisation, Chakana pursues low yields, old wood, and terroir transparency. The Nuna range is not a concession to commercial pressure but a philosophical statement about the spirit of the earth — a reminder that wine can be spontaneous, vegan, and unclarified without sacrificing deliciousness. The Sobrenatural range is not a marketing trend but a logical extension of the biodynamic commitment — a refusal to add anything to a wine that already contains everything it needs. And the Ayni range is not an elite luxury product but a manifesto of reciprocity — a wine that gives back to the land and the community everything that the land and community have given to it.

The future of the estate is tied to the future of Argentina's wine renaissance — to the growing recognition that terroir, not technology, is the source of greatness, and that the most interesting wines are made not by copying international styles but by listening to the voice of place. As the Ayni Malbec continues to earn scores of 94–97 points from the world's most demanding critics, as the Sobrenatural range finds its audience among zero-sulfite enthusiasts from Brooklyn to Berlin, and as the Nuna Brut proves that Argentina can produce world-class sparkling wine from biodynamic fruit, Chakana remains what it has always intended to be: a life philosophy expressed through wine — a way of living, of sharing and believing, of existing in reciprocity with the earth and the cosmos. The story of Chakana is the story of a man who looked at the Southern Cross and saw not merely a constellation but a calendar, a compass, and a covenant — and who proved that the best bottle from Argentina is the one that needs no manipulation, only a glass, a meal, and the patience to let a biodynamic farm speak its truth.