Vino De Eyzaguirre

PAST
In the mid-seventeenth century, the Eyzaguirre family left their home in Vizcaya, Spain, and traveled to Chile to seek their fortune. They prospered and became distinguished citizens of their new country. In 1768 Domingo Eyzaguirre was appointed mayor of the capital city of Santiago.

His son, Domingo Eyzaguirre II, planted some of the first vines from French rootstock in that region and founded the Vino de Eyzaguirre near a village built by monks from a nearby Franciscan monastery.

At first the wine was “bottled” in sturdy, 15-liter earthenware chuicos, which survived the bumpy trip by horse-drawn cart from the village to the monastery. When the winery switched to much smaller glass bottles, however, breakage became a problem. To protect their precious cargo, the monks took to wrapping the bottles in burlap sacks. The idea caught on with the winery and became a tradition that has endured to this day.

We began production of our Vino de Eyzaguirre back in the 1990s, and during this time labor laws in Chile made it very difficult to package our handcrafted burlap-wrapped wines. Originally a crew of men were not capable of producing a finished product which was tightly wound and properly sewn together. Due to this difficult production process our winery was one of the first to employ women in a manufacturing role throughout this otherwise rural part of Chile. To this day we still have five dedicated salaried women wrapping, pasting and packaging our wine by hand.