The Rogue & the Resilience

The story of Leonardo Erazo Lynch begins in Santiago, Chile, where he was born and where he studied Agronomy and Enology at the University of Chile. But Leo was not content to stay. After graduating and working briefly for Chilean wineries such as Pérez Cruz and Via Wines, he decided to travel the world. The journey lasted ten years and took him across five continents — Spain, France, Australia, New Zealand, California, and South Africa. He worked harvests, dug soil pits, and fell in love with the diversity of the world's vineyards. In South Africa, he earned a Master's in Viticulture and Terroir at Stellenbosch University, with a specialisation in soil science, and his research took him to France and Germany to study the influence of soil on wine.

From 2012 to 2020, he was the winemaker at Altos Las Hormigas in Mendoza, Argentina, where he ran experimental projects isolating terroir factors such as soil type, bedrock depth, and drainage. He also worked as a viticulture professor at the University of Concepción. It was there, in 2010, that he first encountered the Itata Valley closely and made his first Cinsault wines. He was seduced by the rich heritage of old vineyards — vines that had been dry-farmed for centuries, bush-trained and own-rooted, on granitic soils that reminded him of the great terroirs he had studied abroad. In 2011, while still teaching, he met Justin Decker, an American from Indiana, and together they founded Rogue Vine in a one-car garage in Concepción. The project was born from a shared obsession: to make wines with character from the forgotten old bush vines of Itata.

But Leo did not settle in the valley's interior. Instead, he moved west to Cobquecura, a fishing hamlet on the Pacific coast north of Concepción — a place with no viticultural history whatsoever, only 5 kilometres from the ocean. Here, he built a winery and family home from recycled materials, entirely solar-powered and off-grid, with a clever water recycling system. He cleared rugged brush and stubborn thorn over several years, and in 2020 planted 4 hectares of white varieties — Chenin Blanc, Albariño, Riesling, and Chardonnay — on stone soils that retain almost no water. It is too cold here for reds; the Pacific energy shapes everything. He lives with his wife Zjos and their four children — Emilia, Esteban, Matías, and Teresa — in this wild, experimental outpost.

Then came February 2023. Bushfires ravaged the heartland of Itata, destroying roughly 440,000 hectares of land, killing 26 people, and decimating ancient vineyards. The fire did not reach Cobquecura, but it destroyed four of Leo's six hectares in Guarilihue — the heart of the valley and the source of his best Cinsault wines. Ninety percent of his old vines burned in a single day. The loss was profound and irreplaceable. Yet in the face of abject disaster, Leo made wine in 2023 — a triumph of resourcefulness and skill. He is slowly recovering, trying to revive the burned vines while rearing his new coastal plantings. As he says, "The challenge is to look ahead."

The guiding philosophy of Leonardo Erazo is expressed in three words: minimalism, precision, and terroir — guided by the mantra "in order to do less, you have to know more." He is committed to winemaking that expresses each vineyard distinctly, not through heavy extraction or new oak, but through patient observation, indigenous yeasts, and vessels that allow the soil to speak. His approach combines modern techniques with established traditions: he uses concrete tanks, old clay tinajas, large wood vats, and food-grade polymer containers, all in service of the same goal — to let the granite and volcanic soils of Itata express themselves without masking. The result is a portfolio that is typified by juiciness, tension, and freshness — wines that are as precise as they are approachable, as ancient as they are alive.

The methodology is deliberately simple and fundamentally terroir-driven. All grapes are hand-harvested from dry-farmed, bush-trained vines. In the cellar, Leo employs native yeast fermentations in a variety of vessels: concrete eggs and spheres, old clay tinajas (amphorae sourced from old bodegas), large wooden vats, food-grade polymer containers, and old barrels. For his striking Piel de Arcilla ("Skin of Clay"), 100% Moscatel from 175-year-old vines spends 45 days on its skins in tinajas — a traditional white maceration that has been practiced in Itata for centuries. For reds, the winemaking is equally gentle: native yeast, no corrections, minimal sulfur only before bottling. The Amigo Piedra Grand Cru is pressed in a 100-year-old vertical wooden press that requires the strength of four people, then aged for 36 to 48 months in cement spheres before bottling without filtration or clarification.

The special cuvées are made with the same care and precision. La Resistencia comes from an undulating vineyard of País, Cinsault, and Moscatel dating to the 1870s. La Leonara is a bastion of viticultural heritage — an amalgam of País, Cinsault, and Carignan with a block of País vines dating to 1798, farmed by the same family for five generations. Las Curvas, La Ruptura, Hombre en Llamas, and El Tunel are the Premier Cru Cinsaults from rockier soils. Amigo Piedra is the Grand Cru — a 0.3-hectare vineyard planted literally on top of a granite rock, with 1970s Cinsault vines that produce a wine of profound complexity and layers. These wines are not departures from tradition but extensions of it — the same indigenous yeasts, the same hand work, the same patience, but with parcels that add new dimensions to the ancient voice of the vines.

The cellar is not a technological facility; it is a recycled, solar-powered space — a small winery where concrete eggs sit alongside century-old tinajas and a wooden press that demands human strength, where Leo and his family do the work. There is no consultant recommending corrective enzymes, no recipe that overrides the vintage, no pressure to produce industrial wines or heavy, extracted blockbusters. There is only the family, the ancient vines, the granite and basalt, and the patience to let each parcel take the time it needs. The result is a portfolio of wines that are honest, precise, and alive — wines that have earned a place on the wine lists of discerning restaurants and shops worldwide. As one writer noted, Leo's wines possess an uncommon sense of soul — wines that speak to the deep, beating heart of pastoral Chile.

To understand Leonardo Erazo, one must understand that he is not merely a winemaker; he is a rogue — in the truest sense of the word. The identity of the project is defined by the three distinct labels that allow him to interpret Itata's diversity without compromise: Rogue Vine (the collaborative project with Justin Decker, born in a garage, focused on the rich culture of the rural farming community); A Los Viñateros Bravos (the village-level wines from higher-clay soils, honest and immediate); and Leonardo Erazo (the Premier and Grand Cru single-vineyard wines, the most precise and profound expressions of his terroir). The estate is not a monoculture; it is a laboratory of terroir. The result is a portfolio of wines that are not merely products but expressions of a place and a philosophy — each bottle a testament to the conviction that wine should be honest, terroir-driven, and deeply respectful of the land that produced it.

The identity is also defined by resilience and regeneration — the 2023 bushfires that destroyed four of his six hectares in Guarilihue, the 90% loss of old vines, and the determination to look ahead. Leo is slowly recovering from the disaster, trying to revive the burned vines while rearing his new coastal plantings in Cobquecura. He is also a champion of the local farming community, paying growers fair prices for organic fruit and helping them offset the yield declines that come with converting to sustainable viticulture. He has shown that yields rebound by year seven, with quality improving by a factor of three or more. His commitment to the community is personal: he knows the farmers by name, he visits their vineyards, and he pays them with his own hands. This is not a winery that hides behind its labels; it is a winery that is embedded in the community.

The identity is also defined by refusal — the refusal to irrigate, the refusal to use synthetic chemicals, the refusal to certify organic (he believes in the practice, not the paper), the refusal to make vineyard blends ("I don't see the point"), and the refusal to treat wine as a commodity rather than an agricultural and cultural product. Leo makes about 35 wines, some of which are simply tests of a few hundred bottles that he makes for fun. Commercially, it may not be the best option. But it is the way he interprets the diversity of Itata. He has moved from conventional farming to organic and biodynamic practice. But he has never abandoned the traditions that make Itata what it is: the ancient País, the fragrant Moscatel, the honest Pipeño bottled in litres, and the skin-contact whites aged in tinajas. The wines reflect this intentionality: they are not radical, not rustic, not naive. They are precise, traditional, and deeply considered — the product of a decade of travel and a farmer's love of his land converging on the oldest vines in the Americas.

The future of Leonardo Erazo is tied to the continued recovery of his burned vineyards in Guarilihue, the maturation of his new coastal plantings in Cobquecura, and the gradual expansion of his collaborative network across Itata. Leo is eager to continue — to explore new expressions of the Guarilihue and Cobquecura terroirs, to deepen his understanding of the mosaic of granite and volcanic soils, and to obtain ever more precise, elegant, and terroir-driven expressions from the fruit of his own ancient and nascent vines. The Pipeño will continue to be the honest ambassador, the Piel de Arcilla the ancient masterpiece, and the Amigo Piedra the supreme expression of granite. He does not chase trends; he chases the truth of his land, and he has the patience to let that truth speak in its own voice — a voice that is Itata-born, Pacific-cooled, and unmistakably Erazo.

In an age of increasing industrialisation in wine — of global varieties, engineered yeasts, and corporate consolidation — Leonardo Erazo stands as a compelling alternative, not because he rejects modernity but because he has embraced a deeper modernity: one that values organic farming over chemical convenience, biodynamic practice over synthetic inputs, dry-farming over irrigation, horse-ploughing over mechanical efficiency, hand harvest over automation, indigenous yeasts over inoculation, concrete and tinajas over new oak intrusion, minimal sulfur over heavy dosing, single-vineyard wines over blended anonymity, recycled off-grid wineries over industrial facilities, and the specific voice of Itata's granite and volcanic soils over the standardised replication of a global style. Leonardo Erazo is not merely making wine; he is proving that a man can become the voice of ancient vines, that 60,000 bottles from Itata's hills can possess the most profound identity, that a wine pressed by four people on a wooden press can taste of the future, and that the simplest philosophy — in order to do less, you have to know more — is often the most profound. From the first garage vintage in 2011 to the wines of today: all united in one mission, one synthesis, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, organic, hand-made, passionately honest wine from the granite and Pacific heart of Chile.