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Caballo Loco: Profile of a Chilean icon and 12 wines to try 

A multi-vintage, multi-regional blend of different grape varieties, Caballo Loco broke the mould when it was launched by Viña Valdivieso in 1994. Julie Sheppard looks at its history and recommends wines to try, including the new Caballo Loco Blanco. 

The name ‘caballo loco’ means ‘crazy horse’ in Spanish – and there was certainly an element of craziness to Viña Valdivieso’s flagship wine, when the concept was first conceived. ‘It breaks the paradigms of premium red wines,’ admits Caballo Loco co-founder Christian Sotomayor. Instead of choosing a single red variety from a prestigious single vineyard site, the Curicó-based winery created a blend that was a patchwork of grape varieties, regions and vintages.

‘The way we put it together was accidental,’ says Sotomayor, who is Valdivieso’s import and export director. ‘Different vintages were getting held back because of the logistics of the winery. Then we started playing with the new vintages too – putting them all together. We liked the 50:50 blend. So we bottled half and kept half back, starting a sort of solera system where we used a proportion of the existing blend as a base for the next blend.’

He adds: ‘It was an expensive experiment – but it was a lucky strike. The wine was accepted everywhere and sold out in 16 months.’


Scroll down to see Julie Sheppard’s top picks from the Caballo Loco series



Caballo Loco wines to try


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