Nakkal Wines

Minimal intervention wines

El Colorado, Canelones

Wine & Wineries

By Karen A Higgs

This is a Guru’Guay Top Pick

Guru’Guay only recommends businesses and service providers in Uruguay that we absolutely love, who love what they do and demonstrate constant quality.

How and why we choose Guru’Guay Top Picks

We’d love to hear about your experience. Please share in the comments below.

Your opportunity to taste minimal intervention Uruguay wine at one of Uruguay’s youngest, coolest and most experimental wineries. Just a year after its founding, Nakkal Wines was declared South America’s revelation winery.

And just two years later, Nakkal Wines are on the wine list at Central, number one of The world’s best 50 restaurants.

Founded by three young wine-makers (now two—Santiago Degásperi and Nicolás Monforte), friends from the world of wine, Nakkal specialises in “minimal intervention” wines. The Washington Post defines minimal intervention as a relatively radical wine making approach that tries to do as little as possible beyond making the wine. Wine making today can commonly use up to 200 and entirely legal additives. Nakkal uses none.

In the last three years they have expanded production from 3000 bottles to over 30,000 bottles, 95% of which is exported to countries including countries as diverse as the US, Poland and Japan.

Nakkal are trailblazers. They are constantly innovating styles. They were among the earliest producers of pét nat wines in Uruguay. Their Nakcool line is part of natcool, a global movement originating in Portugal. Natural wines tend to have higher production costs and they’re quite fashionable leading to higher prices. Natcool wines aim to be young, fresh, drinkable and have a great quality to price ratio.

Descorchados—the “ultimate guide to American wines produced south of the equator” named Nakkal Wines winery revelation of the year (2021) and Santiago was distinguished as winemaker revelation in 2022.

What you should know

A visit to Nakkal is unusual (a beverage co-work!) The winery is hosted in the Colorado Chico vineyard in the wine-producing department of Canelones just over half an hour from Montevideo. Colorado Chico hosts several other young establishments including a vermouth producer. Santiago and Nicolás love the ‘co-work’ atmosphere. So your Nakkal wine tour makes for a more creative wine-tasting tour experience than you might find elsewhere.

All visits involved wine tasting plus a tour of the vineyard. Choose from standard or premium tasting, a ‘picada’ (local cheeses, local honey and other goodies plate) or lunch.

Unfiltered natural wines like Nakkal’s Suelto line are not everyone’s cup of tea. Personally, I love them, especially their Suelto Marselan. Their red blend Anfor Tinto blends Tannat, Merlot and Marselan and has been nominated best Uruguay red a number of times.

The tours and tastings are run by Santiago and/or Nicolás who speak Spanish, English and Portuguese.

Where to buy Nakkal in Uruguay and abroad Here’s a list of locations in Uruguay. We’ll add international locations soon.

Pricing is promotional at this time ranging from 10-40 USD. Visit soon to grab those promotional rates. Their tasting salon opens mid November 2023.