Portrait of Felipe Müller
i. Biography
The Climb
Since 2006, Felipe Müller has served as winemaker at Viña Tabalí, a post that sits at the center of the winery’s coastal identity. The work reads as site-based winemaking: tracking the shape of a vineyard over time, working from soils rather than around them, and building wines that register where they were grown.
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Today
In Ovalle, Chile, the winemaking role at Viña Tabalí asks for continuity and close attention to place. Felipe Müller’s work there is grounded in geography as a working material, with each wine shaped to fit its ground and made to express that site as clearly as possible.
Signature
TATIÉ and Pai are among Felipe Müller’s signature wines, and both point to a style built on precision and site definition. At Viña Tabalí, these wines reflect a practiced respect for origin: specific, composed, and tied to the character of the land in Ovalle.
In Their Words “My Philosophy is to is to seek for the best places possible to produce the different specific wines we make.” That line puts site selection at the center of the method. For Müller, the task is to match each wine to the ground that can carry it best, favoring fit and specificity over broad formulas. The emphasis is on choosing well, then letting the site do the work. “I think the main difference that Talinay compared to other regions in Chile near the coast is the soil.”
Here, the differentiator is not a coastal label but the soil itself. In Talinay, Müller identifies ground as the defining variable, the part of the site that separates it from other nearby coastal regions in Chile. The point is practical: read the soil well, and the wine has a clearer basis to show where it came from.
FAQ
Asked of Felipe
What recognition has Felipe Müller received?
Winemaker of the Year (2025).
The Sunday email
Read about winemakers like Felipe Müller in the Sunday email.
Every Sunday we send a lead story and up to four more about the chefs, winemakers, sommeliers and hoteliers behind the restaurants, bars, wineries and hotels we cover.
Recent stories
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