The Iron Maiden Fan, the 2,200-Metre Hand & the Stone Lagar

Marcelo Retamal was born in Santiago in 1968, raised in a Catholic family, and from a young age he knew he wanted to travel. He watched his uncle, a renowned scientist, travel worldwide and regale him with inspiring tales from afar. His own first taste of travel came in 1992 when the concert of his favourite band, Iron Maiden, was cancelled in Chile — the church and state banned them for their "demonic appearance." "It was nonsense," remembers Reta. "So my parents got me a bus ticket to see them in Argentina. It was one of the best concerts in my life!" That same spirit — rebellious, curious, and unafraid of borders — has defined his entire career.

After studying at the Universidad de Concepción from 1988 to 1995, Retamal was offered his first winemaking job by Pietro De Martino. He accepted under two conditions: first, that he would be able to make wines in different regions of Chile; and second, that he would be allowed to travel each year to different international wine regions. That contract stayed in place for 23 years, and in that time he made wine in over 350 different vineyards and visited hundreds of wine regions ranging from Greece and Georgia to Australia and Alsace. "At first I treated my trips like a marathon… trying to visit as many wineries and taste as many wines as possible. I did the maths one time, and in one visit of three weeks I'd tasted 800 wines!" he says. "My approach changed over time though — now I pick the producer over the wine or appellation. It's the conversation that counts."

Those conversations changed everything. When Retamal started his career in the 1990s, the status quo was simple: winemakers spent more time in the winery than the vineyard, and they would pick according to the date — always before Easter week — and vinify in old raulí vats. That was the way red wines in Chile were made until Clos Apalta changed everything in 1997. The wine world shifted toward riper, more extracted, higher-alcohol styles. By 2009, Retamal wasn't drinking any of the wines he made. "I couldn't bring myself to finish a bottle," he notes. Inspired by travels to producers like Joško Gravner and Elisabetta Foradori, he began a "slow transition" back to wines that were easier to drink — wines with personality, complexity, and typicity. In 2010, he started experimenting with earlier harvests, less oak, and native yeast ferments. In 2011, he convinced the De Martino family to take a bold step with him: no new oak, large Austrian foudres, indigenous yeasts, earlier picking, and a focus on tension, freshness, and drinkability. The 2011 vintage was a landmark — none of the reds exceeded 13.6% alcohol. And it was the year that led him to Itata, where he discovered old vines of Cinsault and began the Viejas Tinajas project — a wine that would shake up Chile's wine world just as palpably as Clos Apalta had done a decade before.

Marcelo Retamal's winemaking is defined by a single, unwavering principle: get out of the way and let the place speak. At Viñedos de Alcohuaz, this philosophy is executed with radical simplicity. Each variety is picked by hand and crushed by foot in stone lagares — shallow, open stone tanks where workers tread the grapes barefoot, breaking the skins gently without crushing the seeds, extracting colour and tannin with a human touch that no machine can replicate. Fermentations are spontaneous with indigenous yeasts — no commercial inoculation, no enzymes, no nutrients. After pressing, the wine is gravity-fed into concrete eggs, Stockinger foudres, or French oak vats for undisturbed ageing. Some wines are made from single varieties and parcels; others are blends where each variety supports the others. After fifteen years of tasting and blending, each cuvée has suggested itself rather than being imposed by formula or plan.

At RETA, the approach is similarly hands-off but adapted to the cooler coastal terroirs of Limarí and the old-vine character of Maule. Grapes are picked early to keep moderate alcohol and ripeness, maintaining freshness and natural acidity. The fruit is either pressed whole cluster or partially destemmed. Fermentations are spontaneous, and SO2 is only added after malolactic fermentation has finished or just before bottling. The wines have a gentle élevage in neutral oak — old barrels that add no wood flavour but provide a stable, neutral environment for the wine to integrate. The aim is to produce wines that represent the place they come from — Chardonnay that tastes of the camanchaca and the granite-calcareous soils of Quebrada Seca; Pinot Noir that carries the chalky, Burgundian soul of Talinay; and Malbec that speaks of the 1945 field blend and the granitic hills of western Maule.

The Pingo Pingo is perhaps the most extreme expression of Retamal's philosophy. A 100% Cariñena from the highest-altitude vineyard at Alcohuaz — 2,200 metres — the wine is aged for three years in a concrete egg before four years in bottle, and still shows youthful vibrancy with a spine of tannin and mouthwatering acidity. The extended ageing in concrete — a vessel that provides natural temperature regulation and gentle oxygen exchange — allows the wine to evolve slowly, preserving its mountain freshness while developing complex secondary aromas of dried rose petal and cedar. This is not winemaking as manipulation; it is winemaking as patience — a belief that the best wines need time, silence, and the confidence to wait. Retamal spends long hours blending in the underground granite cellar at Alcohuaz to the sounds of Pink Floyd — a ritual that is part meditation, part science, and entirely personal.

Marcelo Retamal is not merely a winemaker; he is, in Tim Atkin's words, "the spiritual leader of Chile's wine revolution" — a man who has shaped the direction of Chilean wine more than almost any other individual. In an era when the industry was defined by industrial scale, homogenised flavour, and the tyranny of new oak, Retamal demonstrated that the most profound wines sometimes come from 350 different vineyards, from stone lagares at 2,200 metres, from 1945 field blends in Maule, and from Chardonnay vineyards cooled by the camanchaca in Limarí. It is largely thanks to his work that the Itata Valley, old-vine Cinsault, the Choapa Valley, coastal Limarí, high-altitude Elqui, and the VIGNO association for old-vine Carignan now have a place in the global wine conversation. The same old vines and extreme altitudes that the industry ignored have become, through his work, sources of some of the most honest, vibrant, and deeply place-driven wines in the world.

The legacy of Retamal is the legacy of the restless, curious hand in Chilean viticulture. He is not a typical winemaker: he is a man who travels to Georgia and Alsace for inspiration, who listens to Pink Floyd while blending in an underground granite cellar, who foot-crushes grapes in stone lagares at 2,200 metres, who co-founded the VIGNO association to protect old-vine Carignan, who launched Viejas Tinajas to revive ancient Chilean amphorae, and who believes that the best wine is the one that presents the landscape with honesty and balance. He does not chase scores. He does not chase trends. He makes wines from three cherished parcels for Reta, from the highest vineyard in Chile for Alcohuaz, and from the oldest vines he can find in Spain — and he makes them all with the same patience, the same curiosity, and the same Iron Maiden spirit that drove him across the Andes in 1992. The stone lagares are not a gimmick; they are a philosophical stance that allows the wine to remain honest, unmanipulated, and deeply connected to the most extreme terroirs in Chile.

The future of Retamal's work is tied to the future of extreme-altitude viticulture, old-vine preservation, and low-intervention winemaking across Chile and beyond — to the growing recognition that the best wines come not from the most equipped cellars but from the most committed guardians of place, patience, and tradition. As the Reta wines continue to set the benchmark for coastal Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in Limarí, as the Alcohuaz wines prove that 2,200-metre Syrah and Cariñena can achieve world-class structure and freshness, and as the Sierra de Salamanca project brings Chilean expertise to Spanish old vines, Retamal remains what he has always intended to be: a traveller who became a farmer — a man who trusted the 1945 vines of Romelio, the 2,200-metre granite of Alcohuaz, and the camanchaca-cooled Chardonnay of Quebrada Seca, and who built something enduring across four terroirs and two countries. The revolution is not finished. It is just beginning to ferment.