Casas del Bosque

Casas del Bosque has its vineyards in the Casablanca Valley, the preferred place for premium, cool climate wine production. A state of the art winery situated in this beautiful valley guarantees that they carefully handle and control their entire grape production and treatment, leading to the highest quality wines possible. Currently, Casas del Bosque has 232 productive hectares of white vines: Chardonnay, Riesling, and Sauvignon Blanc, and red vines: Syrah and Pinot Noir.

The ultra-premium Carménère and Cabernet Sauvignon red wines come from the Rapel and Maipo valleys, where they contract specific vineyards sites for their wines. Today, Casas del Bosque is recognized as a vineyard specializing in cool climate varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc, with Pinot Noir and Syrah being outstanding.

Furthermore, the winery is a fun place to visit. Over 15.000 annual visitors from around the world get to experience exciting wine tours and some of the best wine pairing experiences at their restaurant, Tanino, where the motto is "cooking for our wines." Their production reaches approximately 90,000 cases per year. Which is one of the reasons they choose to be a boutique winery: working with smaller quantities makes it possible to maintain the practices necessary to produce the best quality wines. Over 80% of the production at Casas del Bosque, is exported to the most demanding markets abroad.

About the Winemaker - Meinard Jan Bloem

Meinard was born and grew up in The Netherlands. He likes to travel, and on one of his trips, in 1995, he arrived in Chile and hasn't left since. He now regards himself as more Chilean than Dutch. During his first years in Chile, he became the owner and manager of a gas station, which in retrospect, wasn't the most inspired career decision he took in life. He then decided to become a winemaker and studied at the Universidad Católica in Chile, where he graduated as the best student in the history of his Faculty.

After completing his study in Santiago, he went to Montpellier and Geisenheim (Germany) to obtain a Master's Degree in Viticulture and Enology. He also had the chance to work with such renowned people in the world of Pinot Noir as Greg La Follette, Stefan Dorst (Weingut Friedrich Becker) or Sylvain Pitiot at the famous Domaine du Clos de Tart in Burgundy. In Germany, he trained at Weingut Dr. Bürklin-Wolf, producing some of the world's best dry Rieslings. The current winemaker, Italian Nicola Libelli, was recommended by him, ending a tradition of more than 500 years of winemakers from the Palatinate.

Having worked several years at a small vineyard and winery, running everything from viticulture to sales, in 2016, he was ready for a more significant challenge. Having been called by Tim Atkin MW, one of "the younger generation of winemakers [that] is taking the country to new levels." Since the only two Sauvignon Blancs he had ever made are still amongst the ten best from Chile, according to Wine Spectator, the decision to hire him at Casas del Bosque was an easy one. He's one of the few winemakers in Chile who feel more confident in the vineyard than in the cellar, is fluent in six languages and in his free time enjoys riding -and occasionally crashes- a motorcycle.