Chilean Wine with a Pioneering Spirit

In Chile, one winery stands head and shoulders above the rest for the unrivalled tours and experiences that it provides to wine lovers and fans of the brand everywhere. Recognised as offering the Best Winery Tour Experience 2024 – Chile, Montes Wines has been a staple of the region’s winemaking scene since releasing its first Montes Alpha wine back in 1988. Since that day, the company has operated atop the belief that Chile has all of the untapped potential to become a benchmark producer of quality wines and has spent the last 35 years setting the example for fellow wineries across the country to follow.

As the most pioneering premium wine manufacturer in Chile, Montes Wines’ focus rests on three primary areas: quality, excellence, and driving a positive impact in this space. Headed up by Aurelio Montes, one of the original four partners whose involvement shaped this brand into this success story that it is today, Aurelio continues to lead the winemaking area of this ever-evolving business in the present, doing so with the same innate passion for his craft that first led him to this venture back in the 1980s.

Commenting on the lasting success of his innovative wine label, Aurelio tells us, “being a premium brand and offering high-end products means more than just delivering luxury. A company renowned for striking the balance between social, environmental, and economic performance, it is for this reason that, in an industry where the focus is on mass production, Montes Wines is celebrated for a dedication to quality and consistency. “We believe that these two pillars are non-negotiable for delivering exceptional wines”, says Aurelio.

This meticulous blend of unwavering consistency and a unique quality over quantity approach is what has allowed Montes Wines to maintain its frontrunner position for several decades, even in a landscape where wine consumption has been decreasing globally and low-cost wines have seen a significant uptick in sales.

The pioneering excellence that has become synonymous with the Montes brand in recent memory can be traced back to the story of its mystical Apalta winery, situated in the country’s remarkable Colchagua Valley. Boasting a staggering capacity of 2.3 million litres, when this winery was first opened
in late 2004, it allowed the brand to demonstrably increase the production quality of its most acclaimed red wines, such as the aforementioned Montes Alpha, the icon wines Montes Alpha M, Montes Folly, Purple Angel, Taita, and Muse.

Perhaps the standout feature of this industry-leading winery is the Montes Barrel Room, a grand space lined with 800 barrels made of French oak. Set out in a semicircle formation akin to a traditional theatre, this romanthic room is a sight to behold. These brand-new oak barrels house within them Montes’ finest wines, and here they are left to mature in a peaceful musical environment that reflects centuries of traditional winemaking at its finest. This is not to say, however, that the rest of this facility lacks the modernity necessary to distinguish itself in this setting.

Even now, almost 20 years on from the day that it first opened its doors, this winery is still the most modern in Chile – at least in terms of technology and equipment – and gives the team working there the capability to make wines that are not only the best in the country, but that can also more than hold their own on the world’s stage. A big part of this, and the thing that makes Montes Wines’ produce almost entirely unique, is that pumps were not installed in this winery, so that the company could remain true to its guiding principle of minimal ‘handling’.

Gravity is instead left to do the trick, or, more accurately, gravity with a little help from some of the most cutting edge technology that the field of winemaking has at its disposal today. The natural inertia that is achieved thanks to this cutting-edge equipment gives the grapes first-class treatment, and the delicate wine that is achieved as a result speaks volumes about the success of this approach.

Further aiding the company in its wine production are the principles of the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui, which have been incorporated into the very being of the winery to ensure a harmonious connection with the outside world. Nurturing such a strong link with the great outdoors is made much easier given the magnificent surroundings which encompass this state-of-the-art winery, with the ultra-modern facilities discussed above contrasted by the simple elegance of the Divisadero Hill vineyards that they lie at the centre of, giving visitors a panoramic view of nature in all its glory.

The nature-complementary elements of the feng shui principles that can be felt across this winery are water and wood, seen in the wooden path built over a small lagoon near the building’s entrance; the sun and the moon, the powers of which can be experienced thanks to a skylight with a lily shaped fountain directly underneath it that represents both of these light sources; and metal, which is reflected through the retro Ford trucks that are parked at the winery warehouse’s main entrance, representing both maturity and experience.

All of these sights and more can be witnessed as a part of the ‘Montes Experience’ which encapsulates a tour of this mystical vineyard, an exclusive look inside its spellbinding winery, as well as access to the renowned on-site Fuegos de Apalta restaurant. Along with the signature cuisine of the chef, Francis Mallman, patrons of this establishment can enjoy some of Montes’ finest wines, all sourced from different harvest years. The Evolution Tour and Dream Menu experience then takes things a step further, with seven dishes and seven wines on offer.

Having covered Montes’ Apalta winery and vineyard, as well as its tours and experiences, it is worth noting that the company has yet another vineyard to its name. Aurelio explains, “some six years ago, we embarked on a new and challenging venture – establishing a vineyard in one of the most southerly and rural regions of the country, Mechuque in Chiloé, in Chilean Patagonia.” This project is impressive for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that it was the first vineyard to be set up in an area defined by its adverse climate.

Diving deeper into this project, Aurelio tells us, “after planting vineyards here in 2018, we have successfully harvested several grape varieties and are almost ready to launch our first and unique wine from grapes grown in this region. Whilst we still face challenges, such as optimising the ripening processes, we are excited about the future of this project.”

Ultimately, this is just one example of the desire to lead and innovate that exists within this Chilean wine company’s DNA. It is primarily for this reason that, even more than three decades on from the release of its first wine, Montes Wines remains one of Chile’s premier wine manufacturers, a trailblazer in the industry that leverages its respected reputation and track record of quality delivery to tread exciting new ground.

From pioneering new wines to implementing a watering system that saves more than 840 million litres of water per year, Aurelio puts it best when he says that everything that this business does, it does with the future in mind. “Look out for Montes’s next steps”, he says in closing, and if the past three and-a-half decades and counting are anything to go by, this means that great things are still to come from a brand that tore up the rulebook concerning Chilean wine and rewrote it to be better than was ever thought possible.

For more information visit https://monteswines.com/