Cono Sur

The Free Bacchus Story

Most wineries tell you what is certified. Cono Sur publishes the number on the other side of the line: 27.15 per cent of everything it has planted is farmed organically, 306 hectares out of 1,128, and the rest is not. The figure is in its own sustainability report, in a table that breaks the hectares down estate by estate, including the one estate where the organic total is zero.

It is a big producer, founded in 1993 and owned outright by Concha y Toro, and it made its name on Pinot Noir when Chile was planting Cabernet. The organic vines are not simply a block within the company: they sit in a separate business, Viña Cono Sur Orgánico SpA, which the parent owns entirely and which exists to hold the organically managed land. The American organic register shows the same split from the outside, one certificate for the vineyard company and one for the winery.

The conversion began in 1998. In 2000 the winery started moving forty hectares at Santa Elisa, its home estate at Chimbarongo, and because the rules require three clean years before fruit can be certified, the first certified harvest came in 2003. Tim Atkin gave the organic Pinot Noir of 2018 ninety points and named it his best-value red of the year, asking whether it might be the best-value Pinot Noir in the world.

What the certificate covers is worth reading closely, because the house spells it out: the vineyard certificate names four estates, and the processing certificate’s scope is recorded as covering some product lines, not all. In practice that means the bottles that say Orgánico — the Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Malbec and the Cabernet-Carménère-Syrah blend. The far larger Bicicleta range, and the wines above it, are not organic. Its carbon-neutral claim is drawn just as tightly: it covers transport, 433 tonnes offset in the year to May 2023, and says so.