Cecilia Guzmán

The Climb

Technical training at the University of Chile, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences gave Cecilia Guzm the grounding for a role that has since sat between cellar discipline and estate management. The work has been a steady progression rather than a break between stages: a practice shaped by agricultural knowledge, by attention to process, and by the need to make decisions that hold across both wine and business. Since 2000, Cecilia Guzm has been winemaker and general manager of Viña Haras de Pirque, a position that places her inside the daily mechanics of the estate as well as its longer-term direction.

Today

Winemaking and management sit together in the same role, and Cecilia Guzm has treated that overlap as part of the craft rather than a complication. The work demands movement between vineyard decisions, cellar choices, and the broader structure of how the winery runs. Her current approach is tied to helping the winery go green through new practices and methods of winery management, a change she has described in operational terms: “Before, the vineyards and winemaking were managed as two separate things. Now everything is done together.” The shift is practical, but it also changes how the estate is organized, with vineyard work, cellar work, and management moving as one system. Within that framework, the direction associated with Cecilia Guzm is reducing ripeness and extraction. Read plainly, that means tighter decisions around harvest and a lighter hand once fruit reaches the cellar. It is a style built on control and restraint, not excess. Character gives that approach a named expression. The bottling stands as one concrete result of the choices attached to Cecilia Guzm’s work, turning those decisions into a finished wine. The estate context matters here as well: the craft is being carried out in a working vineyard, where weather, weeds, and cultivation are part of the same equation. Cecilia Guzm has said, “We work almost organically anyway, so it’s not a big change. Just dealing with weeds and the need for more organic fertilizer are the biggest shifts.”

Signature

Cecilia's signature wines include Character and Albis.

In Their Words “We work almost organically anyway, so it’s not a big change. Just dealing with weeds and the need for more organic fertilizer are the biggest shifts.” “Before, the vineyards and winemaking were managed as two separate things. Now everything is done together.”

Recognition

Cecilia's honors include First female winemaker general manager in Chile.