Viña SanRoke: Living history of Chilean wine

It comes from a changing earth, trembling and very fertile, it is climber by nature and it coils wherever it happens, once its branches are strengthened, its fruits emerge, these look like purple velvet, juicy and full of life, they seem simple clusters of the vine , the difference is that within them more than 100 years of history are kept, the grapes of Viña San Roke are quality representatives of Chilean wine.

Desiree ramos

It is normal when we want to hear a good entrepreneurial story, imagine a movie, a book, a millionaire or a grandmother narrating fantastic experiences, the kind that make our minds fly. But there are also objects, even foods that convey us with their history, and that is the case of Chilean wine from San Rooke came, a wine that tells a story that opened a field in the world of entrepreneurship at the hands of Cristian Andrés Rozas, who is part of the third generation of the family vineyard located in the Commune of San Rosendo, this 27-year-old lawyer describes us what it has been like to approach a market as competitive as that of wine in Chile, and where it all started shaking.

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Before and after the earthquake

"There is a change from heaven to earth, Viña SanRoke has been around for 100 years, which has been linked to Chilean wine for quite a long time, but until before the earthquake, wines were produced in bulk, that is, they were not sold packaged, but to the older ”explains Cristian; In the 80s, due to the low prices of grapes and wines, there was a need to pack wines in carafes (5-liter glass containers) and it remained stable until 2005, however, they began to worsening prices and production costs increased, there was a lot of competition in the market, so there was practically no competition.

Rozas comments that “something that has stood out to us all our lives is that we have always sold wine, it has always been grape juice, while the competition was very unfair with its wines intervened with water, inks, etc., which made the cost decrease their quantities, we could not sell at those prices, the company began to decline and for the first time we began to propose the idea of ​​bottling the wines, then the 2010 earthquake in Chile came, which changed us and the Viticulture (Art or technique of growing the vine and making the wine) from San Rosendo, which is our commune and Chilean wine in general ”.

With the earthquake the entire infrastructure of the Vineyard was affected, they lost wineries, and everything that was inside, two determining possibilities were raised for his family: selling the field and dedicating themselves to something else or reinventing and bottling the wine, to extract a better price, they opted for the second one, everyone said: “let's bottle it!”

The discovery

They had never made a wine for a bottle, so they asked for help from the professionals, they contacted a Winemaker to advise them, Juan Ledezma, and with certainty Cristian mentions the date “it arrived on October 23, 2011, it was a date that changed forever our history, and as part of their routine they began to tour the vineyards, and began to identify the grape varieties that we had ”, a specialist had never visited them to investigate the grape varieties that they had in the region, perhaps due to the remoteness which is San Rosendo from the cities of Concepción and Los Angeles.

The vineyard had the variety country  y Muscat of Alexandria, but there was a third variety that they did not know, they told him burgundy for its color, but the winemaker realized that this grape was Malbec, Cristian tells “but the plantations of Malbec that exist in Chile are relatively new, grapes that came from Argentina probably, the winemaker was struck by the fact that there was first a Malbec in the south of Chile, and the age of the vines, he asked us how old were the vines? and according to our records the family was over 100 years old, so the vines were over 100 years old too, because we did not plant them, they were already there, then a study was made of them and through historians the reference to That this Malbec he is over 160 years old. "

The Rozas family had never tasted that wine, the event was quite new for them, and due to the large number of years, and the small amount of vineyard (no more than 4 hectares of this ancient vine in all of San Rosendo) the winemaker told them immediately that they had "a gold mine", after that, they continued with their daily life, because they thought it could be a "cloud of smoke", they doubted, but soon after a grape buyer arrived, recommended by the winemaker that the He had advised, her name was Françoise Massoc, who is from a town that is currently called Massoc Freres, “he asked us how much is that grape worth? It should be noted, it is the oldest Malbec in South America, because in Argentina there is a grape that It arrived in 1860 according to exact data, so my father, Jose Luis Rozas, gave it a value that was quite high, the gentleman found it expensive but he paid for it, a thousand percent more expensive than the common and ordinary grape, but he bought it, the first year we sold him the grapes. " says Rozas.

Reconstruction of 2012

In 2011 it was “the discovery” but the following year it was a “reconstruction of Viña San Rocke”, building the winery, acquiring new barrels and buying everything necessary to re-produce wine, were the first assignments, motivated by the interest that showed their first client they thought that perhaps the age of this strain was true, they studied the Malbec strain more, and the more they knew it, at the same time other wineries visited them, such as Santa Rita, Santa Carolina, Concha y Toro, among others who were in search of the grape, to continue the long struggle to make the best Chilean wine.

The Sanrosendino explains "obviously there is so little the amount that there is that it is not enough for everyone to take, this offer and demand made San Rosendo stand out more, not only for the play" La Pergola de las flores "and the carmela that is known from Arica to Punta Arenas, they do not know where the town is but they know of the existence of San Rosendo, and it was also one of the important railway stations in Chile, but now it began to appear on the map as a Vitivinicola sector , before it was separated with Ñuble, there was no other variety of Malbec. ”

Awards that mark 

Un Malbec It requires two years of minimum storage, so their first production appeared in 2015, they are 5 years making bottled wine, despite the short time they have had many achievements, beyond the awards for the wine itself, Viña San Roke It comforts the quality of the raw material that they have, it is recognized, not only for being old or scarce but for the awards that the grape itself has won. Giving a good face of Chilean wine.

Rozas explains “we sell part of that grape, because we still don't have the purchasing power to sell all the grapes we have, and around three vineyards have made Malbec from the same grape. With Françoise Massoc, 70 came out among the best wines in the world, which participates internationally; another vineyard came out as better Malbec from Chile in 2018; another got 95 points out of 100 with an international wine critic known worldwide; and we also got 92 points with our Malbec, in the Descorchados Guide of the newspaper Mercurio, an important list of wines in Chile, there we can see 4 different ways of making wine, and each one has been recognized worldwide and nationally, there you can realize that it is' La Uva ', by itself, has an exceptional quality, independent of the process ”.

Council 

The entrepreneur of Viña SanRoke, advises never give up, if you believe in something you have to keep going even if others think that it is not something productive and without a future, the most important thing is to believe that it can be successful. Having a vision of what people want, not what you or a professional want, "because something happens with wine, a sommelier or thousands of critics may be according to some trend of a certain wine, which is fashionable, perhaps for they are the best wines, but maybe it is not the taste of the population, if you plan to make a wine for them, people will not like it, it is preferable a product that 1% does not like but does 99% "

For the lawyer, a fundamental piece to commercialize Chilean wine is in marketing, nowadays it is much easier than it was in the past with social networks. "Take that tool" as it grows and expands its reach, someone will comment "what I saw somewhere ", in the case of Viña San Roke they had the benefit of that strain that has been called by a lot of press and television," but if the person does not have the same story to tell, maybe the family has something to tell or the vineyard, there will always be something to tell, the wine has to tell a story ”, highlights Cristian.

Do you want to read about more entrepreneurs in Chile and Chilean wine? We invite you to read Hispanic Entrepreneurs Chile