Bodega Reta
no es una marca
Es como me dicen desde hace años. La verdad, no me acuerdo quién fue el primero en decirme asÃ, pero quedó. Viene de Retamal. Con el tiempo, Reta pasó de ser un apodo a ser lo que le da nombre a mi proyecto más grande.
Marcelo Retamal
Before they called me Reta
Dentist by profession. Winemaker at heart.
It all started with my grandmother
My family came from the Sierra de Salamanca and ended up in Curicó. My grandmother—who was a dentist—bought a vineyard there. She wanted to replicate some of what she'd left behind: vineyards among hills and forests. At that time, Curicó was synonymous with wine. And I, being her favorite, followed her everywhere. During the grape harvest, she'd take me with her. I was the file clerk, in charge of handing out the records to the workers.
off note
Within the plan
I did poorly at school. I played chess and always came in second place, only because the teacher hated me. I also played soccer, basketball, and ran track and field. I didn't study much. Even so, I always knew I wanted to be a winemaker. To do that, you had to be an agronomist, and if you're going to learn about wine, you have to be near the vineyards. That's why I went south, to Chillán, to the University of Concepción, in the heart of the Itata Valley.
I took it before
I did it later
In the five years I studied, I didn't work on a single grape harvest. Instead, I went with friends to BahÃa Inglesa. Instead of making wine, I drank it. But when I graduated, I went straight to De Martino, a vineyard in the Maipo Valley. An advisor who knew me from my grandmother's farm put me in touch with Aurelio Montes. Thanks to that, I got a job at De Martino, a winery in the Maipo Valley.
24 trips, a thousand ideas
The deal that changed my life
I made a deal with the owner: every year I worked there, I'd have a month to travel the world and learn about other winemaking cultures. I was there for 25 years and made 24 trips. I learned something different on each one.
I looked for stories
Not just flavor
At first, I went for the classics: Bordeaux, Tuscany, Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Australia, New Zealand, the Douro. I tasted about a thousand wines per trip. Over time, I wanted to get to the root of it all. To meet the producer, see how they thought, what their philosophy was, how they worked. From there, I went to Burgundy, Champagne, Jura, Sherry, Barolo, Gattinara. It wasn't about tasting more anymore, but about connecting with the landscape and the history of the place.
An eternal wine
A Humanized Landscape
After many years of winemaking in different regions of Chile and traveling to learn how wine is made elsewhere, I understood that a wine isn't just its place, it's also its people. I call this a humanized landscape: that what you drink fits in with the history, culture, and way of life of where it comes from. In 2019, I decided to start my own project. Not for monetary gain, but to leave something in this world that will last. In wine, the only way to transcend is to make something that speaks for itself, even when you're gone.
