How large are the groups?

Eight travellers maximum on fixed-date departures, and two to ten on private journeys. The limit exists because eight is the largest table a small producer can host without the visit turning into a performance.

Are the guides local?

Yes. The team is based in Tarija and Camargo, and the drivers, cooks and guesthouses on every route are booked directly and locally.

Wine ExplorersHigh-altitude Bolivia

About us

We are from here. That is the whole business model.

The short version

It started as a favour.

A brass band marching through a Bolivian street during a fiesta

In 2016 a sommelier from Buenos Aires wrote to a friend in Tarija asking whether it was worth flying in for four days. The itinerary that came back was six pages long and included two cellars that do not appear on any map.

She sent it to a colleague. The colleague sent it to a wine club. By the end of 2018 the friend in Tarija had written that itinerary forty times and had started turning people down.

Wine Explorers Bolivia exists because of what kept happening next: people who came for the wine left talking about the valley. About the road into Cinti, the woman selling peaches, the eighty-year-old vines nobody had told them existed. The wine was the reason. The country was the trip.

We are eleven people now — guides, sommeliers, drivers, one very patient logistics manager — and we still write every itinerary by hand.

Ten years, roughly

2016One itinerary, written as a favour for a friend.
2019First fixed-date harvest departure. Eight seats, sold out by word of mouth.
2022The Cinti route opens after two years of building trust with growers in the ravine.
2024A permanent driver and vehicle in Camargo, so the ravine stops being a day trip.
2026Eleven people, three valleys, thirty-four producers on speed dial.

The people

You will spend four days with one of these.

Portrait of the founder — **Ana Lucía Vargas***Founder & head sommelier*Grew up in Valle de la Concepción. Certified in Mendoza, came home anyway.

Portrait of the routes lead — **Marco Terceros***Routes & logistics*Has driven every road on this website, including the ones that are not really roads.

A guide reaching up into an overhead grape pergola — **Ruth Ayala***Guide, Cinti valley*Born in Camargo. Knows which grower is home on a Tuesday and which is not.

A sommelier pouring wine in front of a bottle wall — **Diego Salvatierra***Guide, Santa Cruz*Cooked professionally for nine years before deciding wine was the more interesting problem.

How we work

Three rules we do not bend.

Producers are paid properly

Every cellar on a route is paid for the visit, the pours and the time — before you arrive, at a rate they set. A tasting is work, not marketing.

We stay small on purpose

Eight travellers is the largest table a small producer can host without it becoming a performance. We have turned down groups of twenty.

The money stays in the valley

Drivers, cooks, guides and guesthouses are local, and we book them directly. Nothing about this business needs a head office in another country.

Come and be difficult about it.

The best trips we run are for people with strong opinions about wine. Bring yours — we will find something that argues with it.

Talk to us