Echeverria 'Es Cuiko' Curicó Valley Chardonnay 2020

The Echeverría family came to Chile in the 1750s, from a little town called Amezqueta in the Basque region of Spain. They established agricultural properties in the north of Santiago, where they planted vineyards, among other crops. Some 200 years later in 1930, Roger Piffre de Vauban, a French Engineer from Montpellier, and Roberto Echeverría´s maternal grandfather, travelled to Chile and hence to Chile’s Curicó Valley, some 200km south of the capital Santiago. Here he planted ungrafted vines from pre-phylloxera French origin on an expanse of land called La Estancia, in a little town called Molina. He established there what, at that time, was a frontier technology winery with French equipment and machinery brought directly from France. It’s aim was to supply high quality wines for the domestic market. Soon after, Adriana Piffre de Vauban, Roger´s daughter, married Roberto Echeverría Rubio, and they had one child, Roberto Echeverría. In the early 1950s, after developing diverse industries, Roberto Echeverría Rubio, established a vineyard and winery also in Molina, encouraged by the family relationship with the ongoing winery at the La Estancia estate.

He grew strongly influenced by these two family winemaking activities, and developed an intense love and passion for winemaking, that would lead him to pursue university studies to obtain a degree in Agronomy and Winemaking, which he complemented soon after with Economics, obtaining a PhD at Cornell University in the US. After graduating from Cornell, Roberto worked for eight years as an economist in the World Bank. He lived in Washington D.C., together with his wife Gloria and his children, and travelled intensively worldwide. In his frequent travels, he became aware of the tremendous potential that the production of fine wines had to satisfy the growing demands of more quality-oriented consumers.