German Lyon

My father was a grape producer for many years. In addition, he rented a winery to make his own wine. This is why I grew up between vineyards and old tanks of cement. I remember when I was young, I liked to lay with the grape residue, and I used to run after my sisters and throw it over their white dresses!

Now several years on...what I like the most about my work is that it’s possible for me to create, taking lots of different elements of nature. At the same time, I very much like this work because I am sure that the winemaker profession is a life style where you are always thinking, observing, smelling, learning, etc… to apply to your wines and make them better. It is like being a father, where each of your wines is like a son; you love him with its virtues and defects…

My winemaking philosophies? I believe that the most important factor is to respect the place where the grapes come from, without intervening too much, and leave the grapes to express themselves. Another point is to be very careful during the extraction period of red wines. I taste my tanks at least 2 or 3 times in the day, in order to have a non-aggressive and smooth process. You need to be very conscious that every decision you make, will have an effect in 2 or more years time. And finally; blending, blending, blending!

In Chile, we don’t need a lot of inputs to be able to produce good quality wines, other than healthy grapes. In our particular case, we are in Maipo Alto, a privileged zone for the production of grapes, were we respect our surroundings as well as our landscape.

I work with an absolutely fantastic team at Perez Cruz, and I always believed that a good wine is the product of a team rather than an individual. I have the luck of being the visible face and the one that receives the congratulations for the wines, but everyone in the team is key for the final result, from the person who prunes the vineyard, to the worker that sticks the labels etc. The emotional support from my unconditional wife also gives me the security and the confidence that I need to produce great wines."