TerraMater was founded in 1996 by the Canepa sisters, Gilda, Antonieta and Edda who were all in their 60’s at the time. Basicaly, they contributed extensive agricultural properties and other valuable assets to the newly formed company. The most important of these properties had belonged to the family for 50 years as is the case of the San Jorge estate in Curicó and Caperana estate in Isla de Maipo whilst El Carmen estate was purchased in 1995.
In this way, TerraMater started out with 400 hectares of well established vineyards producing mainly Cabernet Sauvignon of excellent quality from vines of which some are over 50 years old, 350 hectares of fruit trees especially apples and 83 hectares of olive groves producing outstanding quality olive oil.
The most interesting and surprising thing for me was that the Canepa sisters willingly accepted the plan I proposed to create a new winery since all new ventures bring new risks. However, the plan was approved immediately, unanimously and very enthusiastically. That year there was a very good opportunity to take advantage of the increased demand for red wines thanks to studies which showed how consumption of red wine was beneficial to health and that fact that these investigations had been revealed just when offers of red wine were limited resulting in a worldwide increase in the price of red grapes and red wine to coincide with the fact that we had both grapes and wine in quantity and quality. It was September 1996, and we needed a new high-tech winery to be built and fully operational by March, 1997. Not only that but we also needed to build a team of qualified staff, oenologists, start to build a brand and look for customers all as quickly as possible.
What followed was a period of intense but interesting work all against the clock. The first vintage was made by David Morrison and his team of winemakers. As expected, the winery was not ready in time and the winemakers had to work alongside the construction workers laying cement flooring and other teams of workers from both French and Italian suppliers assembling stainless steel tanks. There were problems with electrical installations, with water supply and practically everything that could go wrong did go wrong as with most setting up processes.
The winemakers performed magnificently, almost heroically, filling tanks as soon as they had been erected and collaborating with everyone else to deal with the difficulties and solve problems. In May when the winery was finished and the builders and installers had finished their work, we could finally admire a magnificent, shining, brand new winery with 3,000,000 litres of temperature controlled fermentation capacity in stainless steel as well as the very best available machinery to vinify, de-stem, crush and filter. We had this new winery as well as our old storage facilities full of wine that year at prices which fluctuated between US$ 1.50 and US$ 2.00 per litre of bulk Cabernet Sauvignon, a price which today we can only dream of. But the most important thing of all is that the winemakers managed to make sufficient good quality wine to enable us to launch our own TerraMater brand.
Of the thousands of names I looked at and the hundreds I proposed only TerraMater received immediate, enthusiastic and unanimous approval. All the other names were rejected or received with a “ what else have you got “. TerraMater made its appearance when I joined together two latin words I was familiar with on a piece of paper full of other alternatives. I first mentioned it in a meeting with one of our directors, Enrique Cibié, and Douglas Murray founder of Viña Montes who provided us with some friendly advice. After reading out various names which were all received in silence, I read out the name TerraMater and I was surprised by Enrique’s enthusiastic reaction “ that’s the name, don’t look any more “. Douglas approved adding that the name was “ green “ and that this was a good message to send out. When Miss Gilda knew about the name she was thrilled and found it most appropriate given that the new TerraMater winery had been built on the Caperana estate which was the first property my grand-father José Canepa had purchased and named Caperana after the village where he was born in Liguria, south of Genova in Italy. TerraMater a company which to begin with started only with Mother Earth.
Another interesting aspect of the TerraMater winery and warehouse is its remarkable architecture. Architect, Guillermo Hevia, is in my opinion and that of many others, the best industrial architect in Chile and his design is visually beautiful, very functional, full of natural light and a very agreeable place in which to work. Guillermo has told me that when he shows his work to other architects or colleagues they all choose the TerraMater winery and warehouse as their favourite. Many students of architecture come to visit us each year.
Enrique Armstrong, the construction engineer, was responsible in great part for convincing and negotiating with Guillermo to convince him to design the project. He was convinced that Guillermo had a brilliant idea and advised me to make every attempt to reach an agreement with Guillermo which we eventually did with very satisfactory results.
A very important factor which has contributed to the success we have achieved so far is the confidence customers have had in our company from the very beginning since they were aware of our background and this enabled us to form a team of well qualified and experienced staff members which, in turn, allowed us to penetrate key markets quite quickly and with significant initial volumes. As a matter of fact, one of those customers agreed to purchase an important volume of bottled wines from our company even though, at the time, all I was able to do was show them the plans of our bottling plant and the bottling line which had still not been built or installed.
In this way, TerraMater started out with 400 hectares of well established vineyards producing mainly Cabernet Sauvignon of excellent quality from vines of which some are over 50 years old, 350 hectares of fruit trees especially apples and 83 hectares of olive groves producing outstanding quality olive oil.
The most interesting and surprising thing for me was that the Canepa sisters willingly accepted the plan I proposed to create a new winery since all new ventures bring new risks. However, the plan was approved immediately, unanimously and very enthusiastically. That year there was a very good opportunity to take advantage of the increased demand for red wines thanks to studies which showed how consumption of red wine was beneficial to health and that fact that these investigations had been revealed just when offers of red wine were limited resulting in a worldwide increase in the price of red grapes and red wine to coincide with the fact that we had both grapes and wine in quantity and quality. It was September 1996, and we needed a new high-tech winery to be built and fully operational by March, 1997. Not only that but we also needed to build a team of qualified staff, oenologists, start to build a brand and look for customers all as quickly as possible.
What followed was a period of intense but interesting work all against the clock. The first vintage was made by David Morrison and his team of winemakers. As expected, the winery was not ready in time and the winemakers had to work alongside the construction workers laying cement flooring and other teams of workers from both French and Italian suppliers assembling stainless steel tanks. There were problems with electrical installations, with water supply and practically everything that could go wrong did go wrong as with most setting up processes.
The winemakers performed magnificently, almost heroically, filling tanks as soon as they had been erected and collaborating with everyone else to deal with the difficulties and solve problems. In May when the winery was finished and the builders and installers had finished their work, we could finally admire a magnificent, shining, brand new winery with 3,000,000 litres of temperature controlled fermentation capacity in stainless steel as well as the very best available machinery to vinify, de-stem, crush and filter. We had this new winery as well as our old storage facilities full of wine that year at prices which fluctuated between US$ 1.50 and US$ 2.00 per litre of bulk Cabernet Sauvignon, a price which today we can only dream of. But the most important thing of all is that the winemakers managed to make sufficient good quality wine to enable us to launch our own TerraMater brand.
Of the thousands of names I looked at and the hundreds I proposed only TerraMater received immediate, enthusiastic and unanimous approval. All the other names were rejected or received with a “ what else have you got “. TerraMater made its appearance when I joined together two latin words I was familiar with on a piece of paper full of other alternatives. I first mentioned it in a meeting with one of our directors, Enrique Cibié, and Douglas Murray founder of Viña Montes who provided us with some friendly advice. After reading out various names which were all received in silence, I read out the name TerraMater and I was surprised by Enrique’s enthusiastic reaction “ that’s the name, don’t look any more “. Douglas approved adding that the name was “ green “ and that this was a good message to send out. When Miss Gilda knew about the name she was thrilled and found it most appropriate given that the new TerraMater winery had been built on the Caperana estate which was the first property my grand-father José Canepa had purchased and named Caperana after the village where he was born in Liguria, south of Genova in Italy. TerraMater a company which to begin with started only with Mother Earth.
Another interesting aspect of the TerraMater winery and warehouse is its remarkable architecture. Architect, Guillermo Hevia, is in my opinion and that of many others, the best industrial architect in Chile and his design is visually beautiful, very functional, full of natural light and a very agreeable place in which to work. Guillermo has told me that when he shows his work to other architects or colleagues they all choose the TerraMater winery and warehouse as their favourite. Many students of architecture come to visit us each year.
Enrique Armstrong, the construction engineer, was responsible in great part for convincing and negotiating with Guillermo to convince him to design the project. He was convinced that Guillermo had a brilliant idea and advised me to make every attempt to reach an agreement with Guillermo which we eventually did with very satisfactory results.
A very important factor which has contributed to the success we have achieved so far is the confidence customers have had in our company from the very beginning since they were aware of our background and this enabled us to form a team of well qualified and experienced staff members which, in turn, allowed us to penetrate key markets quite quickly and with significant initial volumes. As a matter of fact, one of those customers agreed to purchase an important volume of bottled wines from our company even though, at the time, all I was able to do was show them the plans of our bottling plant and the bottling line which had still not been built or installed.
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