Octagono Estate

Marcelo Castro Vera, known as the “Crazy Professor,” does things his way. He is a passionate man of strong conviction with a zest for life. After training at a Swiss hotel school and working in hotels in the U.S., he returned to his native land and opened El Nidal, a shipping container hotel in the mountains of Central Mexico. In 2016, he and his wife, Mukasha Dadajonova, founded the Octagono Estate in San Felipe, Guanajuato.

The winery is run mostly by women and directed by winemaker Celia Morales. Marcelo studied old-world wines, questioning the rules of conventional winemaking. He began making the wine intuitively, as natural and honest as possible. It is Marcelo’s vision grounded by Celia’s matter-of-fact practicality that produces highly regarded organic wines.

Natural is the keyword at Octagon. Grapes are harvested and pressed by hand and crushed by foot. Even bottling is done by hand. No electricity or machinery of any kind is involved. All wines are fermented on ambient yeast, receive no corrections, and are bottled unfined and unfiltered with no added sulfites at any point. Production is about 2,000 cases per year.

The name Octagono relates to the significance of the octagon in sacred geometry: rebirth and the passage from the earthly plane into the celestial.