Founder and owner of Vina von Siebenthal.

Text By Herman von Bernhardi

Over 20 years ago Mauro von Siebenthal, a Swiss lawyer and wine aficionado, had a dream. He wanted to produce his own wines and, in 1998 after a long search across the world, he found the ideal terroir in the town of Panquehue in the Aconcagua Valley, in Chile. With the help of four friends the dream finally became a reality and the von Siebenthal winery was born. Fourteen years after his adventure began, and on his second trip to Indonesia to promote his wines, FRV Travel had the opportunity to talk with Mauro about dreams, wines, his winery and his plans for the future.

You were a very successful lawyer in Switzerland so why did you decide to produce your own wine?
Well, if you ask everybody, we all have dreams and we all have projects. I had this dream to do something special and produce my own wine because I had been interested in wine since I was a teenager. I don’t know where this fascination exactly came from but I think being in a vineyard in a chateau in France when I was young, and also living so close to the Tuscany and Piedmont regions, definitely made an impression on me.

Why did you decide to make it in Chile?
14 or 15 years ago I was looking for the perfect location to do this project and after a long search throughout the main wine regions of the world South America sounded very good. There were two possibilities, Argentina and Chile, and today, almost 14 years later, I am absolutely sure that Chile has more chances and more possibilities to produce different types of wine and different types of grapes. That’s why I decided on Chile and it was the right decision.

What makes the Aconcagua Valley so special?
I arrived in December ‘97 in the Aconcagua valley and immediately thought it was a beautiful place with a fantastic climate and nice people; very warm people. Aconcagua is a typical Chilean valley from the Andes to the Pacific Ocean and Panquehue, the small village where I decided to have the vineyard, has fantastic conditions, luminosity, very clear skies, not to high a temperature, it’s very fresh at night and during the day breezes are coming from the ocean from 12 to 6pm. So it’s really a very nice place to have a vineyard. It’s a place with tradition as well because 150 years ago a big vineyard was planted by the Chilean aristocrat Maxilliano Errazuriz, so the place has history.

What is the philosophy behind your wines?

“The wine has to explain the history of the vineyard, the history of the people working on the place. There is a story behind every wine and I enjoy discovering them all.”

Maybe we can say that there’s no philosophy behind the wines, wine is a philosophy on its own. Wine is a philosophy of life, of searching and a relationship with nature that is my vision. A stone is a stone but a stone sculpture is art, so sculpture is the transformation of the stone, in the same way wine is the transformation of the grapes, just like art.

How would you describe your wines?
I can only be subjective in describing my wines but I would say they are the expression of the terroir of Panquehue in the Aconcagua valley; they are fruity and complex wines with an essence of sensuality.

Why do you only produce red wines?
First of all I’m a red wine drinker, but I sometimes taste white wines. I have a lot of friends producing fantastic white wine so I taste them and sometimes I drink a glass but I’m a red wine lover. The second and most important reason is that the Aconcagua Valley is a great place to produce red wines. Currently we grow six types of grapes: merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, petit verdot, carmenere and shiraz.

Any plans for producing white wine?
I have a little project to plant maybe very small quantity of viognier. Viognier needs sun, needs light and in general it needs similar conditions to the red wine. So I believe we can get something interesting.

Tell us more about the wines you produce.
Currently we produce six red wines.
Parcela 7: The classical Bordeaux blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot and petit verdot, but with the characteristics of the new world with lots of flavour and lots of fruit.
Carmenere Grand Reserva: A grape only grown in Chile.
Shiraz Carabantes: Shiraz 85 – 90% but it needs a little drop of cabernet sauvignon to get more richness. It is very different from the rest of my wines, different grapes, different identity and a lot of herbal flower like rosemary. A nice wine.
Montelig: A big Bordeaux style blend with a majority of cabernet sauvignon, petit verdot and carmenere with very long aging in new French oak barrels, between 21 – 24 months. It is a very gorgeous, and a very rich wine.
Toknar: Made using 100% petit verdot grapes.
Tatay de Cristobal: We produce about 3,500 bottles a year of this very limited and special wine from a corner of a small vineyard using mainly carmenere grapes and a little bit of petit verdot.

What award has been the most important one for you?
In 2004 we participated in the Concours Mondial Bruxelles and we won the first prize with Montelig, which was chosen as the best wine out of 5,000 wines from all over the world, including Europe’s traditional areas of Bordeaux and Burgundy. It was a very important moment because I started this project in 1998 and after many years working without any economic results I was very depressed in that sense. This prize helped the winery, not only in popularity, but also financially and was most important for our moral. It was our first recognition after a lot of work and so that was very important. And of course, in 2009 when we placed 1st, 2nd and 4th out of all Chilean wineries selected for the best 400 wines from Chile by Robert Parker magazine.

What are the secrets behind the winery’s rapid success?
Different reasons. First the Aconcagua Valley is a very good place to plant a vineyard. If you look at the vineyard maybe they look like 30-40 year old plants, but they are oblt 12 – 13 years old; nature is helping us. Second is the way we manage the vineyard and we had to be very vigorous. The first year, people who worked with me didn’t understand why we were cutting more than 50% of the yield, but it was done to improve the concentration of our wines. Today the average production in our vineyards is around 800 grams per square metre, but in Chile you can easily produce double that, so as a consequence our wines have a great concentration of aromas and flavours.

Is your winery organic?
Yes, thanks to the natural conditions. But it is not certified. We only use sulphur. It’s a very dry climate with only 100mm of rain per year so there’s no fungus and 90% of the diseases in every vineyard are fungal. Also at night it’s very cool, even during the summer and autumn it’s very cold so there are no pests.

How many bottles do you produce per year?
We are currently producing 180,000 but with our new vineyards we will have around 30,000 bottles more in the next few years. We are available in 21 countries.

What is your favourite wine from von Siebenthal?
Each wine suits my taste so it is very hard to pick only one because each wine is very different. What is incredible is that from three small vineyards located very near to each other, each wine is different and I love every one of them.

Before you had your own winery, what wines did you like the most?
I’m a fan of Bordeaux, but when I was young I was very curious and I tasted many different wines. Every new wine was like a trip, like an adventure; It was like reading a new book or singing a new song every time.

I like wines from all around the world but what interests me the most is to discover wines with strong personality, I don’t like globalization. The wine has to explain the history of the vineyard, the history of the people working on the place. There is a story behind every wine and I enjoy discovering them all.

Thanks for your time Mauro.

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