Louis-Antoine Luyt

He may be a native Burgundian but Louis-Antoine Luyt has quickly become a seminal voice in the fight for independent terroir driven winemaking in Chile. In a country where wine production is run almost entirely by enormous industrial wineries, Louis-Antoine has managed to source fruit and rent vines from independent farmers throughout the Maule Valley. Furthermore, his insistance on dry farming, horse plowing, and native yeast/intervention free winemaking are welcome proof that wines outside of Europe can succesfully be produced with this work philosophy.

At 22, Louis-Antoine was sick of living in France. With the excuse of polishing up his Spanish, he planned a three month trip to South America. This quickly became a permanent vacation of sorts and needing to find work Louis-Antoine found a gig as a dishwasher at a local restaurant. Working his way up, he eventually became the wine buyer and was introduced to Hector Vergara, who at the time was the only Master of Wine in South America. Hector was opening a sommelier school in Santiago, and Louis-Antoine was amongst his first students.

After sommelier school, Louis-Antoine flew back to France to study viticulture and oenology in Beaune. Armed with a firm knowledge of viticulture and winemaking in Beaune, Louis-Antoine founded Clos Ouvert with two partners in 2006.