Bodegas RE

Clay vessels and a second founding

Clay amphorae set the pace for Pablo Morandé, winemaker at Bodegas RE in Casablanca, Chile, where the cellar work turns on old vessels and new blends. He arrived at this station after a cellar-side grounding at Viña Concha y Toro, then a founding role at Viña Morandé in Casablanca Valley in 1996. Bodegas RE followed in 2012, not as a repetition of the earlier estate, but as a smaller house with room for ancestral method and a less orthodox blending hand.

Morandé’s lineage is practical: harvest work, cellar timing, the discipline of watching fruit move from reception to vessel without forcing a house style onto it too early. His record includes the first Chilean chardonnay, a marker that belongs to the longer arc of his work in Chilean wine. At Bodegas RE, that arc narrows into a more intimate cellar, family-owned and shaped around clay amphorae, oak barrels, and the steady pressure of Casablanca fruit. The bench here is not a chef’s bench, but the cellar gives the same reading: tools close at hand, decisions made by touch, and a maker who has spent years letting process become instinct.

Amphorae for unconventional blends

The program at Bodegas RE works across a broad field of grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Carignan, Chardonnay, Garnacha, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, and Moscatel Rosada. The range matters because the house is known less for single-varietal obedience than for blends that pull from ancestral technique, skin contact, and vessels with memory. Still red, still white, rosé, orange, sparkling, amphora, and skin-contact wines all sit within the frame of the cellar.

Clay amphorae are the clearest signal. They ask for a different attention than stainless steel or new oak, closer to the material, less sealed off from the hand. Oak barrels remain part of the setting, but the amphorae give the place its method: a return vessel used for a contemporary purpose. The production scale is small, which keeps the work close to the cellar rather than distant from it.

The underground cellar and the cork oak terrace

The room drops into underground cellars where clay amphorae and oak barrels set the temperature of the visit before any glass is poured. It is quiet there, with the kind of cellar atmosphere that makes speech fall back a little. Guided and private tastings move through that lower register, not as theatre, but as a way of placing the wine beside the vessels that shaped it.

Above, the cork oak terrace changes the pace. Sunlight, bark, and glass make the work feel less enclosed, though the cellar remains the source of the house’s character. Casablanca Valley gives the address its appellation; the cellar gives it its grammar. The useful close is physical rather than promotional: follow the amphorae, then step back onto the cork oak terrace at Bodegas RE.