Mingaco Family Winery

Quick facts

  • Location: Checura, Itata Valley, Chile
  • Owners: Pablo Pedreros (winemaker); Daniela De Pablo
  • Vineyard area:  3 hectares of Moscatel de Alejandría from Pablo’s family vineyards, plus ½ hectare of País and ½ hectare of Cinsault from neighboring growers.
  • Vines: Old vines, ungrafted, bush-trained and dry-farmed along the hills of Itata Valley, parcels dating back 30 to 100+ years. The País vines from a neighboring vineyard are more than 120 years old. Cinsault is around 30 years old.
  • Soils: Predominantly granitic, with red clay and some transparent and white quartz.
  • Main varieties: Muscat of Alexandria; Cinsault; Pais (Mission, Listán Prieto or Criolla Chica)
  • Annual production: Ranges between 10,000 and 30,000 bottles.
  • Philosophy and Practice: Regenerative agriculture practiced since 2010 that prioritizes keeping harmony with the natural life of the valley; farmed according to the biodynamic calendar since 2017.  Use of wild cover crops and biocomplete compost; zero synthetic fertilizers or herbicides in the vineyard. 

Fun facts

  • Generational vines: Pablo grew up making wine on the same land where they live now. The family’s oldest Muscat parcel is more than 100 years old, in the family since Pablo’s grandparents’ generation. On Pablo’s own land, the Muscat vineyard is one he helped his father plant when he was a child.
  • The cuvée that started it all: Mingaco is named after the couple’s flagship wine, which got picked up early by restaurants like 99 Restaurante and DePatio Restaurante, both named on lists of “50 Best Restaurants” in Latin America.
  • Reforesting the valley: Daniela and Pablo have planted an entire array of fruit trees among their vines! Fig, apple, lemon, avocado, orange, peach, plum, European hazelnut, and olive — along with blueberries, boysenberries, artichokes, and native berries like murtilla and maqui. Some produce small amounts for the family’s own consumption, and a number are also in recovery from a wildfire in 2023.

 

Cinema-worthy in its own rite, the story behind Mingaco’s winery brings us a poetic illustration of how biodynamic practices have spread to remote corners of the world under the least likely conditions. 

In one of these corners is Pablo and Daniela’s village of Checura in Chile’s Itata Valley, where until the 1990’s almost none of the residents had access to electricity. Here their young family has taken on a big project: to pioneer natural winemaking in the community and restore biodiversity to their sliver of the valley.

 

On getting started

Even to call Checura a village is a stretch, says Daniela — it’s more of a grouping of houses. Born and raised here, Pablo learned winemaking by doing it alongside his father who had done the same with Pablo’s grandfather. Such is the tradition of most families in the valley who have historically made bulk wine: “You make wine in March and April, you sell or drink it through New Year’s, and then you have all your tanks empty so you make more in the spring.”

It wasn’t an easy upbringing in the countryside; Pablo spent his young years sewing seeds, harvesting grains and working with his family’s horses in addition to working with wine. Living without electricity was a challenge, especially for his sister who was studying in the city and relied on candle light to read at home — “she would waste all the candles for reading to the point where their dad would get upset with her,” Daniela tells us. But it was his sister’s persistence that gave Pablo more exposure to literature than most of his neighbors. At first he read novels, then he read to learn, developing a love for self-led research that would begin to shape his life and work.

In 2004 Pablo moved to the nearby city of Concepción, where a tough six years came to a pinnacle with a magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck the city in February 2010. When it passed Pablo packed his backpack and walked for an entire day to his childhood home in Checura, where he would spend the next five years shedding the effects of hard city life that had threatened his bond with the natural world. 

Perhaps it was Pablo’s upbringing among the fields and vines, a childhood inextricable from rhythms of seasons and growth, that during these recovery years led him to tend not only to himself but to his land. It felt obvious that while detoxing his own body he should extend the same care to his farm, cutting out chemicals and adopting a fully organic practice. “It was hard to climb out of the hole I had dug myself into,” says Pablo, “and when I had the strength to do so, I decided to make wine.”

Pablo’s first wines were ready for bottling in 2015, a País and a Cinsault that he named Piedra Cura or “healing stone.” Traveling to Concepción to sell his small batches every Friday, Pablo’s relationship with the city began to change; a growing network of friends and clients provided new access to knowledge, particularly one local produce store who sold books on agriculture and fermentation. “He would bring wine, and get paid in books. He spent all his wine money on books!” recounts his wife Daniela.

“We met through fermentation. I was making sauerkraut and kombucha, and I was doing a workshop on detox and fermentation at a friend’s restaurant, who invited Pablo because she knew him through his wine.” Daniela, who grew up in a city one hour from Checura, had found her own path to biodynamic farming. After studying creative arts in Santiago and Melbourne then traveling the world for years, it was the quest for better nutrition, “intensive detox focused on body and soul,” that led her into the world of holistic and regenerative agriculture. 

After meeting through Daniela’s workshop, it was a literary coincidence that brought the two together: Pablo was halfway through reading The Art of Fermentation and Daniela Wild Fermentation, both written by Sandor Katz. They took it as a sign — and less than two years later, Daniela moved to join Pablo on his farm.

 

On adopting biodynamic practices 

Daniela’s influence on the winery was immediate: “I had been using [biodynamics] to grow greens and vegetables for some time, then introduced it to Pablo and he actually saw a difference,” says Daniela. “As time went by, we saw that being part of nature, supporting its regeneration, and removing chemicals from every step in the making of our wines is fundamental.” There is a marked difference in quality and taste between Pablo’s grapes and those of their neighbors, whose harvests produce about 90% higher volume each year.

Today the Mingaco winery uses the biodynamic calendar to dictate when they prune, weed, harvest, bottle, and taste their wines. Daniela tells us that Pablo has become so attuned to the subtle changes, he can now consistently tell whether it’s a root, leaf or fruit day just by tasting one of his wines.

 

On forestry and community

In Checura nearly everyone is a farmer, and ninety percent grow grapes to provide to large winemakers for which they’re forced to take low prices. “Itata has been that way for a very long time,” says Daniela, but the tide may be shifting: Mingaco has carved a path that others feel inspired to follow.  “We have friends, mostly young ones, who decided to come here and make wine. They are bringing value to the area with independent winemaking projects.”

Besides spearheading the natural wine movement in the valley, Mingaco also has ambitions to restore biodiversity to the local tree life. 

“In our region we have a lot of non-native pine trees and eucalyptus because of the lumber industry,” explains Diana, “it’s the basis of the economy here. And before that there was the wheat industry, which caused a lot of native trees to be cut down.” Together Pablo and his siblings own six hectares, and within that is a plot of native trees that Pablo has always been careful to preserve. “In addition to those, we plant fruit trees. And the few native trees bring seeds to the vineyards — we find baby native trees among the vines.” 

The goals behind their reforestation efforts are water retention, water resiliency, and diversity.  A few years in, the impacts of their work are already visible: since the couple began to practice without any herbicides or disruptive soil preparations, they’ve noticed birds visiting the farm which Pablo hadn’t seen since he was a child, welcomed back by healthy fruit and insects. In turn they provide fertilization and promote new growth from seeds. 

 “In ten years we hope it will grow into a true edible forest. Today it’s a vineyard with some fruit trees. We know it’s a small impact, but it’s something.”

 

On the rise of a family brand

In 2017 Daniela and Pablo began to gain fast attention. Naming the winery Chekura after their village, they released two flagship wines, “Mingaco” red (Cinsault) and white (Muscat). Friends made introductions to renowned Santiago restaurants like DePatio and 99, and with Mingaco in cellars frequented by importers from all over the world, it didn’t take long for the clientele to notice these two wines unlike any others of the region. Daniela tells us that the realization would often happen on first taste.

“The Chilean wine that’s most commonly known is very French-variety, French-vinified, like Cabernet Sauvignon with a lot of oak. But here you have this Cinsault that is actually being made in a very wild, non-intervention style,” explains Daniela of their red wine. 

“The Muscat I think is an especially good reflection of Pablo. Pablo has a special personality and it shines through in his wines. He imprints it especially in the Muscat because it’s the grape of where he’s from — he’s had a close relationship with that grape since he was a child.”

As they responded to international demand and prepared for more exportation, Daniela and Pablo realized they’d need to change the name of their business: a winery couldn’t be named after a place, even with different spelling. They decided to 

re-brand to Mingaco, repurposing the name of their first wine that people had grown to love.

Today, Pablo does everything in the vineyard and in the winery. Daniela manages the business, compliance, design, brand, and occasional volunteers. Together they care for their three young children Luan, Mayra and Naía.

“Pablo is quite special because he’s got all these traditions from his dad, his granddad, and all this experience — but at the same time, he’s open to improvising, trying things differently,” Daniela tells us. She pauses for a moment and reflects with a smile: if it weren’t for Pablo’s constant search for knowledge, they might never have met.  “He’s always reading something. And that’s what opened him to his new life, to our life.”

 

Wines

 

Mingaco White

Grapes: 100% Muscat of Alexandria

Vineyard and vines: Checura, Chile; Itata Valley. Vines over 40 years old, dry-farmed on south-facing slope at 984 ft. altitude, 26 km from the Pacific Ocean. Coastal dry climate with hot days and cool nights. Regenerative agriculture (no tillage) since 2022.

Soil: Quartz and clay. 

Making of: Grapes are hand-harvested and macerated for 14 days on skins in open-top lagar with oxygen exposure. Free-run wine is aged 24 months in two 1,100 L closed tanks.

Personality: “Exuberant expression of an origin and a variety.” Hazy straw-yellow, round-bodied and smooth with aromas of honey, rosemary, pine nuts, mango, apricot and preserved pineapple. Pair with seafood and shellfish. 

Mingaco Red

Grapes: 60% Cinsault, 40% País

Vineyard and vines: Checura, Chile; Secano Interior Coelemu, Itata Valley. Cinsault vines over 50 years old and País vines over 120 years old, east-facing and west-facing slopes 26 km from the Pacific Ocean. Coastal dry-farmed Mediterranean sites. These parcels belong to local family farmers.

Soil: Fertile trumao alluvial soil, volcanic origin

Making of: Grapes are harvested by hand and fermented on skins in plastic vats for 4 months. Free-run wine is aged for an additional 19 months in old American oak.

Personality: “A summer red to be consumer year-round.” Lively and light-bodied, with notes of violets, blackberry, strawberry, elderberry and lavender. Pair with charcuterie and chickpea hummus. 

 

 

Moscatel de Alejandría | Fermentación Pipeña

Grapes: 100% Muscat of Alexandria

Vineyard and vines: Checura, Chile; Secano Interior Coelemu, Itata Valley. Vines over 80 years old, ungrafted, dry-farmed and bush-trained, 200 m above sea level on west-facing slopes 26 km from the Pacific Ocean. Organic and regenerative farming (Agroecological) since 2020.

Soil: Clay-quartz

Making of: Grapes are harvested by hand in March 2022. Fermented on skins in an open-top fermenter for 14 days in the traditional pipeña method, allowing exposure to oxygen. Free-run wine is aged for an additional 10 months in 4 used 400 liter French oak barrels. 

Personality: “Wild, but a nice wildness!” Deep, slightly hazy straw yellow with floral and juicy nose. Higher acidity with a vibrant, expressive profile.

A few of the winemaker’s gastronomical pairing suggestions are pan-seared white fish with lemon and parsley; white fish sashimi; oysters with herb vinaigrette; scallops with citrus emulsion; and dishes featuring pickles and ferments.