The Cyclist & the Collaborator

The story of Macarena del Río begins in Chile, where she was born and raised by a French mother in a household where wine was always a presence. The French-Chilean duality of her upbringing would later define her entire approach to winemaking: the rigour of Bordeaux training combined with the warmth and resilience of Chilean rural tradition. She studied Agronomy in Valparaíso and the Maule Valley, then crossed the Atlantic to pursue Oenology at the prestigious University of Bordeaux. It was there, in the heart of France's most famous wine region, that she honed her technical skills and developed the audacity that would become her trademark.

In 2011, fresh from her studies and armed with nothing but determination, Maca rode her bicycle straight up to the gates of Château Cheval Blanc in Saint-Émilion and asked for an internship. The audacity of the gesture — a young Chilean woman arriving on two wheels at one of the world's most iconic estates — impressed the team enough to hire her on the spot. The experience was formative: she learned precision, patience, and the absolute importance of terroir. But she also learned that her heart was not in the polished corridors of grand châteaux; it was in the fields, with the farmers, among vines that carried history in their twisted trunks.

Her path to natural wine crystallised through a series of harvests with the luminaries of France's low-intervention movement. She worked with Yvon Métras in Beaujolais, absorbing his approach to carbonic maceration and whole-cluster fermentation. She consulted with Domaine Léonine in Roussillon in 2013, deepening her understanding of Mediterranean viticulture. She worked harvests with Patrick Bouju of Domaine La Bohème in Auvergne and Jean-Christophe Comor of Domaine Les Terres Promises in Provence in 2015. Each experience added a layer to her philosophy: trust the grape, respect the farmer, intervene only when necessary. It was during one of these harvests that she met Thomas Parayre, a French graphic designer who had moved to Chile and, by happenstance, ended up rooming with Louis-Antoine Luyt — another Frenchman then beginning his path toward natural wine in Chile. Thomas caught the wine bug from his roommate, worked harvests with Louis-Antoine, and eventually found himself in the same cellar as Maca. They fell in love. The project was inevitable.

In 2016, Maca and Thomas founded Agrícola Macatho — the name a fusion of Maca and Tho — near their home in Chillán, in the Itata Valley. Without family vineyards or external funding, they rented a little cellar outside town and began reaching out to local farming families in the Maule and Itata valleys. Inspired by Louis-Antoine Luyt's model of working with small growers, they paid fair prices for grapes in a market that deeply undervalued them, and they worked alongside these families in their fields, encouraging organic and regenerative practices. The cellar was modest — all stainless steel, inherited equipment, no concrete or wood — but the intention was vast: to make wines that honoured the ancient, own-rooted vines of southern Chile and the people who kept them alive.

The guiding philosophy of Agrícola Macatho is expressed in three words: collaboration, simplicity, and life. Maca and Thomas are committed to winemaking that expresses each farmer's terroir distinctly — not through heavy extraction or new oak, but through patient observation, indigenous yeasts, and the gentlest possible handling in stainless steel. Their approach is deliberately simple: they have no family vineyards, no external funding, and no fancy equipment. What they have is relationships — with farmers, with vines, and with the tradition of southern Chile. The result is a portfolio that is typified by freshness, drinkability, and honest joy — wines that are as precise as they are approachable, as ancient as they are alive.

The methodology is deliberately minimal and fundamentally collaborative. Grapes are hand-harvested in small boxes from dry-farmed, bush-trained vines. In the cellar, they are either fermented whole cluster or destemmed with a large mechanical destemmer inherited with the rented cellar — a machine that, unlike many smaller destemmers, yields a very high percentage of whole berries, which makes Maca quite happy. When doing carbonic maceration, Maca's approach recalls Yvon Métras: the whole clusters are deposited in stainless steel tanks and left for about two weeks, with CO2 added once to the top of the tank. For other wines, the grapes are destemmed and macerated on their skins for varying lengths — 5 days for the rosé, 14 to 69 days for the reds, 20 to 30 days for the skin-contact whites. All fermentations are spontaneous with indigenous yeasts.

The special cuvées are made with the same care and precision. ChaCha is a skin-contact blend of Chasselas and Chardonnay, each macerated separately before blending. Falta Schuko is a co-fermented skin-contact blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Chasselas. María Rosé is a five-day maceration of 200-year-old País. Cuchufli blends País from Maule with Moscatel from Itata. Segundo Flores and Toca Tierra are pure País expressions from different terroirs and with different maceration lengths. Pedro Jr. is 100% carbonic-macerated Cinsault. Fresa Grossa is carbonic Syrah. Each wine is a collaboration with a specific farmer and a specific place, and each is raised on fine lees in stainless steel until bottling the following March.

The cellar is not a technological facility; it is a rented, modest space — a small winery outside Chillán where stainless steel tanks stand in quiet service to the terroir, where Maca and Thomas do the work by hand. 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 couple, the ancient vines, the granitic and basaltic soils, 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 from Paris to New York. As one writer noted, Maca's wines possess an uncommon sense of soul — wines that speak to the deep, beating heart of rural Chile.

To understand Agrícola Macatho, one must understand that it is not merely a winery; it is a collaboration — between a French-Chilean woman and a French man, between Bordeaux training and Itata tradition, between the farmers who kept these vines alive and the drinkers who are discovering them for the first time. The identity of the project is defined by the farmers — their names and vineyards appear on every bottle, and Maca and Thomas's work is as much about helping them farm sustainably and earn a fair living as it is about making wine. The identity is also defined by the absence of ownership — they have no family vineyards, no inherited land, no external investors. They rent a cellar, lease parcels, and buy grapes from neighbours. This is not a limitation; it is a liberation. It forces them to build relationships, to listen, and to work with what the land and the community provide. The estate is not a monoculture; it is a network. The result is a portfolio of wines that are not merely products but expressions of a place and a people — each bottle a testament to the conviction that wine should be honest, collaborative, and deeply respectful of the hands that produced it.

The identity is also defined by resilience and advocacy — the 2017 and 2023 wildfires that threatened their vineyards, the timber industry's plantations of fast-burning pine and eucalyptus that surround the farmers' plots, and the economic pressure that pushes growers toward abandoning vines for monocultural tree farming or residential plots. Maca and Thomas are acutely aware that their project is part of a larger fight: to keep ancient vineyards in the ground, to protect indigenous forests and biodiversity, and to prove that sustainable viticulture can provide a viable livelihood. They pay fair prices in a market where large companies might pay only 20 cents per kilo of fruit. They encourage organic and regenerative practices even when farmers are suspicious of yield reductions. They are, in essence, advocates for the rural communities of Itata and Maule, using wine as a tool for social and ecological preservation.

The identity is also defined by refusal — the refusal to irrigate, the refusal to use synthetic chemicals, the refusal to chase the industrial wine model of the Central Valley, the refusal to certify organic (they prefer "the way of your grandfather"), and the refusal to treat wine as a commodity rather than an agricultural and cultural product. Maca and Thomas have kept their range playful and personal — ChaCha, Cuchufli, Falta Schuko — resisting the pressure to standardise or corporate-ify. They have moved from conventional farming knowledge to organic and regenerative practice. But they have never abandoned the traditions that make Itata and Maule what they are: the ancient País, the fragrant Moscatel, the honest Chasselas, and the carbonic Cinsault. The wines reflect this intentionality: they are not radical, not rustic, not naive. They are precise, traditional, and deeply considered — the product of a Bordeaux education and a farmer's love of Chilean granite converging on the oldest vines in the Americas.

The future of Agrícola Macatho is tied to the continued health of the ancient vineyards they collaborate with, the deepening of relationships with farming families, and the gradual expansion of their network across Itata and Maule. Maca and Thomas are eager to continue — to explore new expressions of the Itata and Maule terroirs, to deepen their understanding of the mosaic of granite, basalt, and clay, and to obtain ever more precise, elegant, and terroir-driven expressions from the fruit of their partner farmers' ancient vines. The ChaCha will continue to be the skin-contact ambassador, the Segundo Flores the grandfather's tribute, and the Pedro Jr. the carbonic joy. They do not chase trends; they chase the truth of their community, and they have the patience to let that truth speak in its own voice — a voice that is Itata-born, Maule-rooted, French-Chilean-guided, and unmistakably Macatho.

In an age of increasing industrialisation in wine — of global varieties, engineered yeasts, and corporate consolidation — Agrícola Macatho stands as a compelling alternative, not because it rejects modernity but because it has embraced a deeper modernity: one that values organic farming over chemical convenience, regenerative practice over synthetic inputs, dry-farming over irrigation, hand harvest over mechanical efficiency, indigenous yeasts over inoculation, stainless steel neutrality over new oak intrusion, carbonic maceration over heavy extraction, minimal sulfur over heavy dosing, farmer collaboration over land ownership, fair prices over exploitative markets, and the specific voice of Itata and Maule's mosaic of soils over the standardised replication of a global style. Macarena del Río and Thomas Parayre are not merely making wine; they are proving that a couple with no land can become the voice of ancient vines, that a rented cellar can produce wines of international recognition, that a bicycle ride to Cheval Blanc can lead to a lifetime of honest farming, and that the simplest philosophy — farm in the way of your grandfather — is often the most profound. From the first vintage in 2016 to the wines of today: all united in one collaboration, one synthesis, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, organic, hand-made, passionately honest wine from the granite and basalt heart of Chile.