Paco Leyton

The Training Agronomy is the root of Leyton’s craft. His education at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile placed the vineyard before the cellar, and that order still explains the wines associated with him: search first for natural balance in grape maturity, then work with restraint. That restraint is also philosophical. Good enology, in Leyton’s view, does not dominate nature; it releases what nature already holds. The idea is practical rather than decorative: grapes from extreme terroir, minimal intervention in the winery, and wines built for tension rather than weight. He is also identified as a Pinot Noir pioneer, a role that sits naturally beside that agronomic lens. Pinot Noir rewards attention to site, freshness, and subtle shifts in maturity, the same concerns that run through the label’s emphasis on minerality and balance.

The Lineage The house story begins in 2008, when Leyton and his partners co-founded Clos des Fous in Cauquenes, Maule, Chile. The label was created to challenge a blunt perception of Chilean wine: that it was boring, industrial, green, and overripe. That founding motive is central: it explains the family resemblance across the wines. Rather than answer size with more size, the project looked for terroirs capable of ripening grapes without losing freshness. The connective thread is not a single vineyard alone, but a way of reading place: maturity with lift, structure with energy, intervention held back. In 2019, Leyton founded Agricola Grillos Cantores, extending the same vineyard-first logic into a separate project. A year later, he became owner of Clos des Fous, carrying forward the label he had helped originate while keeping its founding argument intact.

The Table The wines give the lineage its most concrete form. Clos des Fous 'Grillos Cantores' Cabernet Sauvignon is associated with the Grillos Cantores Vineyard in Alto Cachapoal, Chile, a site planted with Cabernet Sauvignon. Clos des Fous 'Pour Ma Gueule' Assemblage Itata 2017 comes from Itata, Chile, and brings together Cinsault, Pais, and Carignan. The blend ties Leyton’s work to grape varieties and regions that can speak through freshness and tension rather than simple ripeness. Clos des Fous 'Cauquenina' is a five-varietal blend from dry-farmed old vines planted on ancient red granite slopes. In that image—old vines, dry farming, granite—Leyton’s agronomic formation returns to the glass: the wine begins with where and how the grapes grow.