The Uncle, the 200-Year Vine & the Pipeño Hand
Roberto Henríquez is a fu manchu-mustachioed phenomenon — a Chilean agronomist and enologist who has, in little more than a decade, rewritten the story of the Americas' oldest wine tradition. Working with ungrafted, dry-farmed bushvines between 100 and 250 years old in the Bío-Bío and Itata valleys of southern Chile, he crafts pipeño — the ancient, rustic, deeply authentic style of wine that existed long before Cabernet Sauvignon colonised the country's export market. Founded in 2015 with just 400 bottles (now grown to 60,000), his project is a love letter to País — the grape brought by Spanish missionaries in the 16th century, also known as Mission in California and Listán Prieto in the Canaries — and to the smallholder farmers who have kept these vines alive through centuries of neglect. Roberto studied at the University of Concepción, worked in commercial wineries across Chile, South Africa, and Canada, and found his awakening in the Loire Valley with René Mosse before returning to his roots at age 29. He is often tagged as a natural winemaker, but that is not a label he pays much attention to. He is more concerned with working with local grape varieties to express terroir — intervening only if things go wrong, otherwise trusting the grapes, the 200-year-old vines, and the granitic soils of his homeland. The wines are made in open-top Raulí wood vats (lagares), foot-stomped, gravity-fed into Raulí barrels (pipas), fermented with indigenous yeasts, and bottled unfined and unfiltered with minimal or no sulfur. His Santa Cruz de Coya — a País from vines planted in the 19th century — has been described as a "revelatory tasting" that introduced the world to the soul of Chilean wine. His Rivera del Notro — a white field blend of Semillon, Corinto, and Moscatel — was named by Decanter among the top 30 orange wines in the world. And his Las Pichanas Cinsault — from a centuries-old dry-farmed parcel in Itata — has become a benchmark for the variety in the New World. This is not winemaking for export volume. This is winemaking for the rescue of a culture.
The Uncle, the Loire & the Henríquez Hand
The story of Roberto Henríquez begins in an uncle's vineyard — with Enrique Ascencio's vines in the Itata Valley, where a young Roberto discovered the connection between farming, tradition, and winegrowing culture. That childhood experience marked him for life. He studied agronomy and enology at the University of Concepción, then did what every ambitious Chilean winemaker was expected to do: he worked for the most important commercial wineries in Chile, gaining experience in the industrial scale of the country's export machine. From there, he travelled abroad — South Africa, Canada, and France — to specialise in different wine cultures and climates.
The turning point came in the Loire Valley, where he worked with René Mosse — one of France's most respected natural winemakers. Mosse's approach to biodynamic viticulture and minimal-intervention winemaking ignited something in Roberto that the large Chilean wineries had suppressed. He also spent time with Louis-Antoine Luyt, the French-Chilean pioneer who had already begun working with País in the Maule Valley. At age 29, Roberto returned to the Bío-Bío and reconnected with his roots — not as a consultant or a corporate winemaker, but as a student of the farmers who had been making pipeño wine in the same way for centuries. He learned to make wine with the farmers, not above them — destemming by hand, fermenting in open Raulí vats, foot-stomping, and gravity-feeding the wine into pipas. In 2013, he made his first wine. In 2015, he founded the Roberto Henríquez winery with 400 bottles. Today, production has grown to 60,000 bottles, distributed in New York, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, London, Barcelona, Sydney, Seoul, and beyond.
Beyond his own winery, Roberto has created Sin Patrones — an agricultural collective of young agronomists who work without bosses or hierarchies, rescuing peasant fruit trees to make distillates, ciders, and beers. It is a piece of the countryside in new bottles, symbolising a way of thinking collectively about an activity that goes far beyond a company. Roberto is guided by the sensitivity to nature that was so important to his Mapuche ancestry — a deep respect for the environment that stands in stark contrast to the logging companies whose pine and eucalyptus plantations now dominate his homeland. He is a gentle spirit, but also extremely dedicated and focused. His ambition is not for himself but for his region. Making great wines is almost secondary to protecting and nurturing the land of his roots.
"The story of país is the story of the soul of Chilean wine, and to my mind Roberto is communicating that story better than anyone else."
— Tom Harrow, Wine Critic & Importer
Bío-Bío, Itata & the Granitic Hand
The Bío-Bío and Itata valleys are the southern soul of Chilean wine — a landscape of granitic hills, small mountains, and dry-farmed vineyards that has been cultivated since the 16th century but was steadily erased from the global wine map by the rise of industrial Cabernet Sauvignon. These valleys are located at the southern end of Chile's viticultural area, at roughly the same distance from the Equator as Spain or central California. The climate is cool and extreme: a cool spring, summer temperatures that rarely exceed 30°C, and a quick transition from autumn to winter. The mountain topography creates a patchwork of microclimates, with vines situated on inclines and small hills. Maximum altitude is under 400 metres. For Roberto, this is the most unspoilt place to make wine in Chile — a region where old farmers work traditionally, having never used chemicals, and where the soil diversity between plots is extraordinary.
Roberto farms approximately 7 to 10 hectares spread across four parcels in the mountains near the Cordillera de Nahuelbuta, close to the town of Nacimiento. The vines are dry-farmed, ungrafted, and bush-trained — many of them 200 to 250 years old for País, and 100 years old for Moscatel de Alejandría, Corinto (Chasselas), and Semillon. The height of the vines varies dramatically: the Rivera del Notro vines stand at roughly 1 metre, while the Santa Cruz de Coya vines crawl close to the ground. The soils are a patchwork of granite, red clay, quartz, alluvial deposits, and basaltic rock — a geological complexity that gives each parcel a distinct identity. And because phylloxera never reached Chile, these vines are ungrafted — rooted directly in their native soil, carrying the microbial and mineral memory of centuries without the interruption of American rootstock.
Roberto also sources grapes from friends and smallholder farmers close to Nacimiento and Itata — a network of growers who have preserved their ancestral vines despite decades of pressure to pull them out and plant commodity crops or eucalyptus. This is not a scattershot approach but a moral commitment: by paying premium prices for parcel-specific fruit and marketing each vineyard by name on the bottle, Roberto has helped transform the rural Itata economy. Before the post-2010 artisan revival, these growers sold their centuries-old fruit to volume producers for anonymous bulk wine at prices that barely covered costs. Many were pulling vines. The direct grower partnerships established by Roberto, De Martino, and Garage Wine Co. have saved an unknown but substantial number of ancient vineyard parcels and stabilised the communities of Coelemu, Trehuaco, Guarilihue, and Portezuelo.
Nacimiento is a small town in the Bío-Bío Region, nestled in the foothills of the Cordillera de Nahuelbuta and surrounded by the ancient vineyards that Roberto has made famous. It is not a wine tourism destination; it is a working agricultural community where farmers have tended the same vines for generations, passing knowledge from father to son without textbooks or enology degrees. The town is close to where Roberto was born, and the surrounding countryside is where he learned to make pipeño wine with the local farmers. For Roberto, Nacimiento is the centre of his world — the place where he returned at age 29 to reconnect with his roots, and where he now farms some of the oldest vines in the Americas. The proximity to the Bío-Bío River provides water and moderates the climate, while the mountains create the air drainage that protects the vines from frost.
The Itata Valley is one of the oldest wine regions in the Americas — planted by Spanish missionaries in the 16th century with País, the common ancestor of California's Mission and the Canary Islands' Listán Prieto. For centuries, Itata was the heart of Chilean wine, but the global rise of Cabernet Sauvignon and the industrialisation of the Central Valley pushed Itata into obscurity. The valley's granitic soils, cool climate, and smallholder farming culture were considered unsuitable for modern wine production. Roberto has proven otherwise. The Itata Valley is now recognised as the largest and most unique territory of old vines in the world — a place where dry-farmed, bush-trained País and Cinsault have survived for 200 years on thin granitic soils. The Coastal Cordillera parcels around Coelemu, Trehuaco, Guarilihue, and Portezuelo produce wines of extraordinary freshness, low alcohol, and mineral complexity. For Roberto, Itata is not a forgotten region but a living museum — the place where Chile's wine soul still breathes.
The Cordillera de Nahuelbuta is a coastal mountain range that runs through the Bío-Bío and Araucanía regions, creating the dramatic topography that defines Roberto's vineyards. The granitic soils of this range — decomposed bedrock from the Coastal Cordillera batholith — are thin, shallow, and poor in organic matter, forcing vines to struggle and concentrate their fruit. The elevation is modest (under 400 metres), but the inclines are steep, and the exposure varies dramatically from one parcel to the next. The mountains trap cool air, creating a diurnal shift that preserves acidity while the daytime sun pushes ripeness. The granite gives the wines a distinctive chalky, mineral texture and a floral, herbal aromatic profile that is unmistakably southern Chile. For Roberto, the Nahuelbuta is not just a mountain range but a spiritual anchor — a place where the Mapuche connection to land and the Spanish wine tradition converge in vines that have outlived both empires.
Roberto's viticulture is a direct continuation of the methods that have been practiced in southern Chile for 400 years. The vines are dry-farmed — no irrigation, ever. They are ungrafted — phylloxera never reached Chile, so the vines root directly into their native soil without American rootstock. They are bush-trained — head-trained gobelet style, with the vines forming low, gnarled bushes that resist wind and require no trellising. And they are farmed organically by tradition — the old farmers never used chemicals, and Roberto continues this practice, managing the vineyards himself without herbicides or pesticides, using compost, bio-fertilisers, and manual labour. The yields are tiny, the work is backbreaking, and the results are extraordinary: fruit that carries the concentrated essence of 200 years of adaptation to granitic soil, cool climate, and human care. This is not modern viticulture; it is viticulture as time capsule.
Pipeño, Indigenous Yeast & the Raulí Hand
Roberto Henríquez's winemaking philosophy is distilled in a single word: pipeño. This is not a marketing term but a technical and cultural tradition that has defined southern Chilean wine for centuries. Etymologically, pipeño refers to wine stored in a pipa — a very large ageing vessel made of native Raulí beech wood (Nothofagus alpina). Culturally, it means wine of and for the people, made rustically from traditional Spanish cultivars, both red and white, using methods that have barely changed since the colonial era. Roberto has embraced this tradition not as a museum piece but as a living, evolving practice — one that produces wines of extraordinary honesty and terroir transparency when combined with his exacting attention to vineyard health and harvest timing.
The cellar is deliberately low-tech and non-industrial. There is no temperature control. The process is the same for whites and reds: grapes are fully destemmed by hand, then allowed to ferment in open-top wooden vats (lagares) made of Raulí wood — massive foudres that hold the fermenting must. There are no pump-overs. The cap is managed by foot-stomping and gentle manual pressing. The length of skin maceration is determined by the length of fermentation; once fermentation completes, each tank is pressed and the wine is gravity-fed into Raulí pipas for ageing. Fermentation is driven entirely by indigenous yeasts — no commercial inoculation. Sulphur is minimal or absent across the range. And the wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered, carrying their sediment, their haze, and their microbial memory from vineyard to glass. Some whites receive extended skin contact (orange-wine-style aging), pushing the aromatic intensity of Moscatel and Corinto into new territory.
What emerges from this pipeño-natural approach is a portfolio that is light, refined, and profoundly site-specific. The Las Pichanas Cinsault is pale, translucent, and ethereal — fresh red cherry, cranberry, rose petal, and chalky tannin at 12–12.5% alcohol. The Santa Cruz de Coya País is rustic, honest, and deeply moving — light translucent red fruit with an earthy, mineral lift that speaks directly to the granitic soils. The Rivera del Notro — a field blend of Semillon, Corinto, and Moscatel — is textural, aromatic, and complex, with waxy lemon, honeysuckle, and a subtle tannic grip from skin contact. The Pingüino Pet-Nat captures the energy of spontaneous fermentation in a bottle. And the Molino del Ciego and Tierra de Pumas explore the boundaries of single-vineyard País and Cinsault. This is winemaking for truth, tradition, and the rescue of a culture that industrial Chile tried to forget.
Pipeño, Indigenous Yeast & the Raulí Covenant
The guiding principle of Roberto's cellar is that the wine has already been made by the vine — the winemaker's job is to protect it from modernity. The ancient, dry-farmed, ungrafted vines provide healthy, complex grapes with indigenous yeast populations that have evolved on the fruit for centuries. The hand-destemming ensures gentle extraction. The open-top Raulí lagares allow for natural temperature regulation and oxygen exchange. The foot-stomping replaces mechanical extraction with human touch. The gravity-fed transfer to Raulí pipas preserves the wine's delicate structure. The indigenous yeast captures the microbial soul of the Bío-Bío and Itata valleys. The minimal or absent sulphur preserves the wine's living, evolving character. And the unfined, unfiltered bottling keeps the texture, the phenolics, and the ancient memory intact. The cellar is not a factory but a farmhouse — where Roberto Henríquez, agronomist and historian, applies the lessons of 400 years of Chilean pipeño to produce wines that are unmistakably, defiantly alive.
Las Pichanas, Santa Cruz de Coya, Rivera del Notro & the Pipeño Hand
The Roberto Henríquez portfolio is a constantly evolving map of southern Chile's ancient vineyards — each wine named for a specific parcel, each parcel a collaboration with a smallholder family, each bottle a document of terroir that has been farmed for centuries. The wines span single-vineyard País, Cinsault, and heritage white field blends — all united by pipeño methods, indigenous yeast, minimal or zero sulfur, and unfined, unfiltered bottling. Production is small and highly allocated — individual bottlings often yield only 1,000 to 3,000 bottles, and total production across the full portfolio is approximately 60,000 bottles per vintage. The wines circulate globally through natural wine bars, specialist retailers, and fairs like Raw Wine — but always in tiny quantities. The current portfolio represents a decade-long exploration of Chile's deepest viticultural roots, from the granitic hills of Coelemu to the banks of the Bío-Bío River.
The Pipeño, the 250-Year Vine & the Mapuche Hand
Roberto Henríquez is not merely a winemaker; he is a translator — the person who took the ancient, forgotten wine culture of southern Chile and taught the world to read its language. In an era when Chilean wine was defined by industrial Cabernet Sauvignon, anonymous bulk production, and the erasure of indigenous traditions, Roberto demonstrated that the most profound wines sometimes come from a 200-year-old País vine on a granitic hillside, fermented in a Raulí wood vat by a farmer who has never used a pump-over machine. It is largely thanks to him that the dry-farmed valleys of southern Chile and their signature grape variety, País, now get a proper mention in wine reference books. The same pipeño tradition that industrial Chile tried to forget has become, through his work, one of the most exciting natural wine movements in the Americas.
The legacy of Roberto Henríquez is the legacy of the rescuer hand in Chilean viticulture. Roberto is not a typical Chilean winemaker: he did not inherit a large estate in the Maipo Valley, he did not chase Parker points with over-extracted Cabernet, and he did not build his brand on tasting-room tourism. He is an agronomist who returned to his uncle's vineyard at age 29, learned to make wine from farmers who had never read an enology textbook, and spent a decade building direct relationships with smallholder growers who were on the verge of pulling their 200-year-old vines. His completion of the Loire apprenticeship with René Mosse was not a credential but a confirmation — proof that the methods he had learned from the old farmers of Bío-Bío were not primitive but profound. The Sin Patrones collective is not a side project but a philosophical extension — a way of working without bosses, without hierarchies, and without the extractive logic that defines modern agriculture.
The future of the project is tied to the future of heritage viticulture in the Americas — 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 Las Pichanas Cinsault continues to set the benchmark for New World Cinsault, as the Santa Cruz de Coya proves that País can be a wine of genuine emotional depth, as the Rivera del Notro demonstrates that Chilean orange wine belongs on the world stage, and as the Pingüino Pet-Nat introduces a new generation to the joy of ancestral-method sparkling, Roberto Henríquez remains what he has always intended to be: a pipeño maker in the Bío-Bío valley — structured not by marketing or technology but by 200-year-old vines, Raulí wood, indigenous yeast, and the eternal reminder that the story of país is the story of the soul of Chilean wine, and that he is communicating that story better than anyone else. The story of this winery is the story of a child who walked in his uncle's vineyard and saw a future where the world would finally taste what Chile had been hiding for 400 years.
"Roberto is guided by the sort of sensitivity to nature, to his environment, that was so important to his Mapuche ancestry."
— Tom Harrow, Wine Critic & Importer