Duration: 4

Los Cerros de San Juan Vineyard & Winery

Los Cerros de San Juan vineyard has paved its way in search of excellence. 150 years have been dedicated to make this winery the oldest and most traditional cellar in Uruguay.

HISTORIC PATRIMONY OF THE WINE WORLD
According to the orally transmitted accounts, the German founders dug a chamber under the wine cellar, that was filled during the winter with cold rainwater. In vintage epochs, the young wine circulated through bronze pipe lines installed into the water chamber to generate the necessary coolness, being the first temperature controlled fermentacions that history registers. Upon culminating the vintage the warm water was removed from the chamber to be filled again the next winter. As the production grew the quantity of cold water was not sufficient, for which ice bars were added in, to achieve the desired effect. Not existing electric pumps at the time, the labourers achieved the circulation of the wine through a pump prompted by their own strength generated by pedalling in a sort of fixed bicycle.

Today we can see the pipes mentioned in the second floor underground. Specialist indicated this could be the first fermentation temperature control system that the vitiviniculture history registers.