Hacienda Quilloay

Quebranta first in the cellar

Quebranta sets the first decision for Pepe Moquillaza, Winemaker at Hacienda Quilloay in San Juan Bautista, Ica. He works at the point where pisco and wine meet, using the same grape as material, measure, and argument. Moquillaza says, “Since 2003, I have 13 years already making Pisco,” and that early placement of pisco still holds the line of the house. At Quilloay, the work does not split into separate identities. The grape carries both the distillate and the natural wines, and the discipline sits in keeping that connection legible.

His stated mission is plain: “The mission we had was to rescue and revalue the Quebranta grape.” That is the lineage he names here, not a school or a single teacher, but a recovery project built through use. He also calls Quebranta “the Queen of grapes” for Peruvians, a phrase that gives the work its national register without turning it into nostalgia. The grape is handled as something to defend. Range matters less than focus.

A wine lab inside a pisco practice

Hacienda Quilloay is the oldest recorded hacienda in Peru, from 1633, and its present craft has the feel of a working laboratory rather than a polished estate program. The scale is small, the method natural, and the fruit stays close to criolla varieties: quebranta, negra criolla, italia, and torontel. The wine focus runs toward skin contact, but Quebranta remains the reference point, the grape against which the work is read.

Moquillaza gives the benchmark himself: “The wines should be very fresh, but at the same time should express a lot of fruit, fresh fruit and some dried fruits as well because that’s the typical character of Quebranta.” Freshness, fresh fruit, and dried fruit are not decorative tasting terms in that sentence. They are cellar criteria. Pisco and wine move through different forms, but both return to the same question: whether the grape still sounds like itself after fermentation, handling, and time.

Concrete tanks among the ruins

The place around the work is rustic, quiet, and close to the desert valley. Small vine patches sit among the ruins of a 17th-century Jesuit property, with traditional concrete fermentation tanks carrying the practical weight of the cellar. The setting does not smooth away its age. Stone, heat, vine, tank, and distillery sit near one another, so the room for tasting feels less like a display than a pause beside the method.

That intimacy matters because Quilloay’s craft depends on proximity. The visitor is not being led through a broad portfolio or a polished sequence of releases. The center is narrower: Quebranta in the glass, Quebranta in the still house, and Moquillaza’s conviction that a Peruvian grape can hold both memory and work. When the house names Inquebrantable and MiMo Italia, it points back to the same bench-side question: what Quilloay can draw from criolla fruit in Ica.