The Grape, the Paintbrush & the Humble Hand
Escándalo Wines is the intensely personal project of Mauricio Veloso Estuardo — a Chilean agronomist who studied oenology in Madrid, made wine in California, New Zealand, El Bierzo, Ribera del Duero, and La Mancha, and returned home in 2011 to give voice to the forgotten heritage vineyards of Colchagua and Itata. Without owning a single hectare of vines, Mauricio works with local farmers who tend 75- to 80-year-old dry-farmed parcels planted in the 1940s and 1950s — organic by default, bush-trained by tradition, and on the verge of being pulled out before he arrived. His philosophy is disarmingly simple: "Que la uva siga siendo uva" — Let the grape remain grape. No commercial yeasts. No enzymes. No filtration. No ideology. Just manual harvest, gentle pressings, spontaneous fermentation, natural cold stabilisation, and a pinch of sulphur when the wine asks for it. The labels are painted by Mauricio himself. The Pipeño label carries a photograph of his grandfather. And every bottle is a quiet scandal against the industrial wine machine — authentic, fresh, honest, and alive.
The Agronomist, the Paintbrush & the Veloso Hand
Mauricio Veloso Estuardo was born in Chile and trained as an agronomist at the Universidad Austral de Chile — the southern university that has produced some of the country's most thoughtful viticultural minds. But Mauricio was never content to stay in one place. While working harvests in California and New Zealand, he fell in love with the wines of Spain — specifically the appellations of El Bierzo, Ribera del Duero, and La Mancha. In 2006, he packed his bags and moved to Madrid to study oenology at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, immersing himself in the old-vine culture, the co-fermentations, and the low-intervention philosophy that would later define Escándalo.
After years of working in Spain, tasting wines across Europe, and absorbing the humility of Old World winemaking, Mauricio returned to Chile in 2011. What he found was both heartbreaking and inspiring: small farmers across Colchagua and Itata were on the verge of pulling out their ancient vines — Carignan planted in the 1940s, Semillón from the 1930s, País and Cinsault interplanted in the old pipeño style — because the industrial wine market had no use for them. The big wineries wanted volume, standardisation, and international varieties. The old vines were an inconvenience. Mauricio saw them as living archives.
In 2015, he bottled his first wine under the Escándalo label — a name that captures both the rebelliousness of the project and the joyful chaos of natural fermentation. With no vineyards of his own, no investors, and no marketing budget, he built the project one handshake at a time: approaching farmers, offering fair prices, converting viticulture to organic practices (no pesticides, only sulphur), and vinifying the grapes with the lightest possible touch. Today, Escándalo is one of the most sought-after natural wine labels in Chile, distributed from Brooklyn to Guatemala, and poured in some of Santiago's most progressive restaurants. The labels — each one painted by Mauricio himself — are as individual as the wines inside.
"Que la uva siga siendo uva."
— Mauricio Veloso, Escándalo Wines
Colchagua, Itata & the Heritage Hand
Escándalo Wines is a nomadic project — Mauricio owns no land, but instead follows the grape wherever the oldest, most honest vines are found. His two primary territories are the Colchagua Valley and the Itata Valley — two regions that could not be more different in climate and culture, yet both harbour extraordinary heritage vineyards that the industrial wine world has largely ignored.
In Colchagua, Mauricio works with Carignan vines planted in the 1940s — 75 to 80 years old, dry-farmed, bush-trained, and farmed organically by families who have tended them for generations. The soils are a mixture of granite, clay, and alluvial deposits, and the climate is warm and Mediterranean, tempered by the Pacific influence. The Carignan from these parcels is muscular, granular, and deeply savoury — a wine of earth and memory. The Pipeño comes from Colchagua too: a traditional field blend of País and Cinsault grown together, harvested together, and co-fermented in the ancestral style of the Chilean countryside.
In Itata, further south and closer to the coast, the climate is cooler and the vineyards are even older. The Semillón comes from vines that are 80 years old or more — some of the last remaining Semillón plantings in Chile, a variety that once rivalled País in hectares before Sauvignon Blanc arrived and wiped it from the map. These Itata vines are dry-farmed, ungrafted (phylloxera never reached Chile), and farmed without chemicals by smallholders who have preserved them against all economic logic. For Mauricio, Itata is not just a valley — it is a repository of lost history, and every bottle of Semillón is a resurrection of a name, a story, and a flavour that industrial Chile tried to forget.
Colchagua is the heartland of Chilean wine tourism, but most visitors never see the small, dry-farmed parcels that Mauricio works with. His Carignan comes from vines planted in the 1940s — bush-trained, unirrigated, and organically farmed. The farmers were on the verge of pulling them out to plant more profitable crops when Mauricio arrived. Today, these vines produce some of the most authentic, granular, and savoury red wine in Chile. The Pipeño field blend of País and Cinsault is another Colchagua treasure: juicy, rustic, and unmistakably country. For Mauricio, Colchagua is where the old Chilean countryside still breathes.
Itata is one of Chile's oldest wine regions, yet it has been marginalised by the industrial wine boom. The valley is cool, coastal, and rural — a place where small farmers have preserved ancient vines for generations without chemicals or irrigation. Mauricio's Semillón comes from 80-year-old vines here, some of the last of their kind in the country. The maritime influence preserves acidity and freshness, while the old vines give concentration and depth. 20% of the grapes see three weeks of skin contact, giving the wine a copper hue and textural complexity. For Mauricio, Itata is the future of Chilean natural wine — a place where heritage, humility, and the Pacific fog converge.
All Escándalo vineyards are dry-farmed — no irrigation, ever. The vines are bush-trained in the traditional gobelet style, low to the ground, resistant to wind and drought. The farmers use no pesticides, no herbicides, and no synthetic fertilisers — only sulphur when necessary. The yields are tiny, the fruit is concentrated, and the results are wines of extraordinary authenticity. Mauricio does not seek certification; he seeks relationships. He visits the farmers regularly, tastes the grapes in the field, and decides the harvest date together with them. This is not contract farming; it is a partnership of trust and shared purpose.
Every Escándalo label is painted by Mauricio himself — not designed by an agency, not printed from a template, but hand-painted with brush and ink. The Pipeño label carries a photograph of his grandfather, a nod to the generations of Chilean farmers who kept these vines alive through dictatorship, economic crisis, and the rise of industrial agriculture. The labels are as individual as the wines: some are abstract, some are figurative, all are personal. For Mauricio, the label is not marketing — it is a diary. Each bottle is a chapter in a story that began in Madrid, passed through California and New Zealand, and returned home to the dirt roads of Colchagua and Itata.
Amiable Fermentation, the Winter Cold & the Gentle Hand
Mauricio Veloso's winemaking philosophy is distilled in a single sentence: "No tenemos la última palabra, no tenemos certezas, ni defendemos ideologías. Para nosotros hay magia y nobleza suficiente en la transformación de la uva en vino." — We don't have the last word, we don't have certainties, and we don't defend ideologies. For us, there is enough magic and nobility in the transformation of grape into wine. This is not minimal-intervention winemaking as a political statement; it is minimal-intervention winemaking as an act of humility.
The Escándalo cellar is a model of gentle simplicity. All harvests are manual, in small baskets. All pressings are delicate. Fermentations are amiable — slow, spontaneous, and temperature-controlled only by the ambient conditions of the winery. Mauricio uses no commercial yeasts, no enzymes, and no additives of any kind. The wines are aged in stainless steel and concrete; occasionally a small percentage sees used French oak, but wood is never the dominant voice. Sulphites are minimal — used only when necessary for the wine's evolution in bottle, and often not at all. The wines are bottled unfiltered, after a natural sedimentation by gravity.
What distinguishes Escándalo from many natural wine projects is Mauricio's rejection of dogma. He does not fetishise funk. He does not chase volatility. He does not believe that a wine must be cloudy or reductive to be "real." His goal is simply to allow the grape to speak — to let the terroir, the variety, and the vintage express themselves without interference. The result is a portfolio of wines that are fresh, honest, and deeply drinkable: a Semillón with the clarity of a mountain stream, a Carignan with the grip of old vine roots, a Pipeño with the joy of a country fiesta. These are wines made by a man who has tasted the world and chosen to come home.
Amiable Fermentation & the Winter Covenant
The guiding principle of Mauricio's cellar is that the winemaker is a conductor, not a composer. The old, dry-farmed vines provide healthy grapes with complex indigenous yeast populations. The manual harvest preserves berry integrity. The gentle pressing avoids bitter phenolic extraction. The spontaneous fermentation captures the microbial soul of each valley. The natural cold stabilisation — using only the winter chill to settle the wine — eliminates the need for fining or filtration. The stainless steel and concrete ageing preserves freshness and minerality. The minimal sulphur allows the wine to evolve naturally in bottle. And the unfiltered bottling keeps the texture, the living yeast, and the ancestral memory intact. The cellar is not a laboratory but a kitchen — where a travelling agronomist applies the lessons of Spain, California, and New Zealand to the grapes of his own country.
Semillón, Carignan, Pipeño & the Scandal Hand
The Escándalo portfolio is deliberately small and tightly focused — each wine is a portrait of a specific valley, a specific variety, and a specific moment. Production is tiny, often just a few thousand bottles per cuvée, and the wines are released when they are ready, not when the market demands them. The Semillón has become a global calling card for the project — seen on wine lists from Brooklyn to Guatemala, praised for its clarity, texture, and honest expression of old-vine Itata. The Carignan is the red backbone — a wine of muscle, earth, and granular tannin that proves Chile can produce world-class Carignan. The Pipeño is the country soul — a joyful, juicy field blend that honours the ancestral wine culture of the Chilean countryside. And the Cabernet from Cunaco shows that even a "commercial" variety can be scandalous when treated with respect.
The Humble Scandal, the Painted Label & the Grape's Hand
Escándalo Wines is not merely a winery; it is a quiet revolution — the story of how one agronomist with a paintbrush and no land changed the conversation about Chilean natural wine. In an era when Chilean wine was defined by industrial scale, corporate consolidation, and the erasure of smallholder farming, Mauricio Veloso demonstrated that the most profound wines sometimes come from a 80-year-old Semillón vine in Itata, fermented by its own native yeast, bottled unfiltered, and labelled with a hand-painted portrait of the winemaker's grandfather. It is largely thanks to projects like Escándalo that heritage varieties like Semillón, Carignan, and País now have a place in the global natural wine conversation. The same vineyards that industrial Chile tried to forget have become, through his work, some of the most exciting and honest expressions in the country.
The legacy of Escándalo is the legacy of the humble hand in Chilean viticulture. Mauricio is not a typical Chilean winemaker: he does not own a large estate, he does not chase scores, and he does not build his brand on supermarket placement. He is an agronomist who travelled the world, fell in love with Spanish old-vine culture, and returned home to save the vineyards that the export machine had abandoned. He works with farmers, not against them. He paints his own labels. He tastes his wines every day and admits he has no certainties. And he believes that the grape, not the winemaker, should have the last word.
The future of the project is tied to the future of heritage viticulture and smallholder farming in Chile — to the growing recognition that the best wines come not from the most famous appellations but from the most committed guardians of ancient vines. As the Semillón continues to set the benchmark for Chilean natural white on the world stage, as the Carignan proves that old-vine Colchagua can produce reds of real depth and character, and as the Pipeño shows that the ancestral field blend culture of the Chilean countryside is alive and relevant, Mauricio Veloso remains what he has always intended to be: a travelling agronomist who came home — not to sell wines, but to let the grape speak. To let the uva siga siendo uva. To create a little scandal against the machine, one painted label at a time.
"No tenemos la última palabra, no tenemos certezas, ni defendemos ideologías. Para nosotros hay magia y nobleza suficiente en la transformación de la uva en vino."
— Mauricio Veloso, Escándalo Wines