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

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

That first release, Caballo Loco Number 1, was a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir from the 1992, 1993 and 1994 vintages. It was created by winemaker Luis Simmian, who also blended Number 2.

French winemaker Philippe Debrus (now at Botalcura) took a hand in Numbers 3-5. Caballo Loco is not a yearly release – ‘on average it’s every 18 months’ says Sotomayor.

The New Zealand influence

New Zealand-born Brett Jackson (below) arrived in Chile 30 years ago and has been winemaker at Valdivieso since 2001. He worked alongside Debrus for Caballo Loco Number 6 and has created all of the subsequent blends.

‘Valdivieso was a sparkling house, so this venture into still wines was a big thing,’ remembers Jackson. ‘It’s a very unique style for Chile – and each bottling has a unique character,’ he says. ‘People are more accustomed to seeing a vintage on a label, so there’s a barrier we have to break through there,’ he says.

Jackson inherited the ‘solera’ referred to above, which is still used today. New releases combine 50% of this ‘reserve’ wine, with a blend of new vintages. Thus, the latest release, Caballo Loco Number 20, which is made with 50% Caballo Loco Number 19, will contain a percentage of wine from the original 1994 blend, now more than 30 years old.

‘The young wines are all aged separately for up to four years, rarely with more than 20% new oak,’ says Jackson. ‘My oak use has changed since we got a vapour cleaner – a steam cleaner for the barrels,’ he explains. ‘The steam cleaner gets barrels so clean. I used to throw barrels out after three or four years; now I can keep a wine in the same barrel for four years.’

He adds: ‘I don’t use US oak as I don’t like that coconut flavour.’ As for the reserve wines: ‘Some is stored in stainless steel, a little bit in concrete, also incorporating 3,000-litre foudres.’

Regional repertoire

The style of the blend has evolved over the years: from a full-bodied, rich red dominated by Cabernet or Malbec, to the current fresher style with increased acidity. In part this reflects changing international tastes and winemaking trends, but it’s also indicative of changes within the Chilean wine scene, as new varieties and new (or rediscovered) regions are being explored.

So for the first time, the Caballo Loco Number 20 blend contains Grenache and Tannat from Maule. There’s also dry-farmed Carignan from Maule (introduced for Number 17), plus the more long-running components: Syrah from Limarí, Carménère from Colchagua, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Malbec all sourced from Curicó and a core of Maipo Cabernet Sauvignon.

Meanwhile, the Caballo Loco Grand Cru series, launched in 2010, drills down further into these specific terroirs, focusing on site selection and special vineyards. With cuvées including Limarí, Curicó, Apalta and Sagrada Familia (a sub-region of Curicó), the range gives a feel of the individual components that Jackson might use to weave the tapestry of his blend.

Caballo Loco Blanco

The latest addition to the range is Caballo Loco Blanco, an inaugural release of only 2,000 bottles. ‘It only took me seven years to put it together,’ quips Jackson, who wanted a white blend that echoed the style of the red, rather than a single-variety Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc as might be expected from Chile.

Inspiration came during a trip to Spain, when Jackson tasted aged white Riojas including Viña Tondonia and Marqués de Murrieta Castillo Ygay. He liked the slowly oxidised but fresh style and thought he could adapt it, ‘based on what we have in Chile’.

The core of the blend is barrel-fermented Chardonnay from Limarí Valley, which spent five years in barrel, with lees stirring. But at the same time Jackson was also playing around with Moscatel from Itata. ‘We have to pay homage to those vineyards; they’re so much a part of Chilean history; it’s where Chilean winemaking started,’ he says.

‘Moscatel de Alejandria is a tough call – it has this phenolic edge. But if you put it into barrel for four years the tannins disappear and it becomes so rich, with oxidative characters.’ Jackson also experimented with Moscatel in amphora. ‘The flavours are nice, with no volatile character and it has an incredible dryness to it, which helps to off-set the sweetness of the Chardonnay,’ he explains.

The blend also includes old-vine Semillon from Curicó, which Jackson describes as ‘probably the most neglected variety we have in Chile’. Viognier, also from Curicó, adds a floral character. The blend has long, slow, gentle oxidative ageing and initially it was too rich, lacking the freshness Jackson had found in the white Riojas.

‘Working with the sparkling wines has helped me to understand acidity,’ says Jackson, who has been responsible for making Valdivieso’s sparklers since 2016. So he sought out other base wines with greater acidity. ‘A touch of Pinot Gris from Casablanca, with a really sharp acidity to it – I use it as a sparkling base. Plus a touch of Pinot Noir from Bío Bío, made as a blanc de noirs.’

Looking ahead

Jackson is already working on Caballo Loco Blanco Number 2, which will contain a proportion of Number 1, using the same solera system as for the red wines. At the Valdivieso winery, tasting samples for the second blend, he’s like a kid in a candy store; running around between barrel stacks, tanks and amphorae.

Channeling the skills of a chef, he describes the cellar as ‘my pantry’. We taste 2021 Chardonnay from Limarí in amphora, 2023 Chardonnay in barrel, Itata Moscatel in amphora (2021) and barrel (2019) and 2023 Semillon in stainless steel.

‘It’s an exciting time in Chile,’ states Jackson. ‘When I first got here we were like kids: we looked at mum and dad – aka France – for everything. Now we’re like a teenager: lots of confidence, doing our own thing. And there’s still lots to do,’ he adds.

What excites him most? ‘We’re recognising areas that we hadn’t looked at before. Now we’re playing around with vineyards in the south, Osorno, for sparkling wines,’ he says. ‘Pretty much all Semillon in Chile is old-vine – there’s been nothing new planted since the 1970s. I also work with a Cab Franc vineyard planted in 1900. The best vineyards are the ones that have survived: the vines can survive dry-farmed – old vines just ride through these hot summers.’

Caballo Loco Blanco Number 2 is pencilled in for release later in 2024. ‘It’s been really challenging but really satisfying to develop Caballo Loco Blanco. The concept behind it fits so well with Caballo Loco red. I’ll be interested to see how it evolves and what it looks like in 10 years,’ concludes Jackson.

Caballo Loco wines to try

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