For most of a decade, Sidra Pülku ranked as Argentina’s leading maker of craft cider. Then came the wildfire of 2017, which burned its orchard to the ground. A short while later, its founder died. Despite these obstacles, the small Patagonian producer has risen from actual ashes to reclaim its title. So how has this female-led, family-run venture become the cider and perry of choice at award-winning restaurants and bars across Buenos Aires?
To find out, I’m traveling to Villa Regina, population 40,000, to meet two generations of cider makers, Mariana Barrera and her mom, María Inés Caparros. To get there, I fly over 700 miles to the province of Neuquén, in the west of the Patagonian region, then drive two hours east through orchards and vineyards to Villa Regina. An agricultural town with Italian heritage dating back 100 years, Villa Regina is roughly equidistant from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, located among the low-lying buttes of Río Negro’s Alto Valle region, where apples and pears have been grown for more than a century. This is where Pülku started cultivating organic orchards for its own craft cider production in 2011.
The word “Patagonia” might bring to mind pricey winter jackets. Heavy gear isn’t quite so necessary, however, for my visit during the summer in this vast 410,000 square-mile southern cone of South America. Daytime temperatures easily hit 95º Fahrenheit during the hot, dry season, while rainfall is less than 12 inches a year. Nights here in the Alto Valle are nearly unbearable without air conditioning. The day I arrive at their chacra, or farm, Caparros is red-faced next to the parrilla, grilling chinchulín (chitterlings) and entraña (skirt steak) for lunch under the weeping willow, while her dog, Chancho, eagerly awaits some scraps.
This region’s agricultural story began over a century ago, when engineer César Cipoletti brainstormed a hydraulic system for Río Negro, recognizing the potential of an irrigation network in this semi-arid corner of Argentinean Patagonia. His canals created a breadbasket of grapes, pears, apples, peaches, and other stone fruits, an undertaking that changed the course of agriculture in the central-southern Argentine province. The mostly Italian migrants who dug these channels were paid with land, though they could also choose cash, and were given the opportunity not only to raise and feed their families, but also to sell the produce they cultivated. Cipoletti’s work paid off. Pülku, as well as the region’s numerous fruit farmers, industrial cider producers—such as 1888, Real, Victoria and Pehueña—and wineries all depend on these irrigation canals today.
At some point, these migrants began cultivating Red Delicious apples (and later, Williams or Bartlett pears), craftily making use of every last piece of fallen, bruised, and rotting apple to turn out low-quality cider. Cider soon became a secondary industry in the region, packaged in green bottles that were inspired by Champagne, complete with gold foil capsules and plastic corks. With around half of all apples destined for industrial juice, and around 12 percent of that going to cider makers, according to the national food and beverage undersecretary, Patagonian cider became an affordable tipple that even teetotalers sometimes allowed themselves at end-of-year celebrations, widely considered the poor man’s fizz. That is, until 2010, when Ernesto Barrera and María Inés Caparros dreamt up Pülku with a far more noble beverage in mind.
Transplants to the area, much like the Italians who had arrived a century earlier, the couple had driven through the Alto Valle many times on the two-day, 980-mile commute from Buenos Aires, where they lived, to San Carlos de Bariloche in Río Negro, where they both worked. Aged 55 and looking to move away from their careers in agronomy and nuclear science, the couple decided to embark on their own venture. Locals dubbed them “los locos de la sidra,” or “the crazy cider people,” for their efforts.
While Caparros had worked at the Argentina National Atomic Energy Commission, her husband had set up agritourism trails across Argentina, like the yerba mate tea route in the province of Misiones.
“He knew this country back to front, as well as a large part of the rest of Latin America,” she says. “When we first thought about creating a project—cultivating Tokai grapes to make wine—we looked at Mar del Plata on the Atlantic coast, as that’s where I was born. But after traveling to Europe to research that original idea and unable to locate land with adequate access to water there, we changed tack and decided to make cider in Patagonia.”
Born in Chubut province, Ernesto was a true Patagonian with farmers for parents. “He always loved this valley, while I called it my promised land,” María Inés says. “So we decided to try our luck here in 2010.”
An agronomist buddy living in Villa Regina helped them find an operational 62-acre farm, with one part that was ready for replanting, the other with 50-year-old trees needing love and attention. Starting over with new Red Delicious and Granny Smith plantations at Chacra Don Simón, the couple was in for the long haul, patient enough to wait up to 10 years for their first fruits to be picked.
“Some of the challenges we faced were the lack of resources as well as the inability to obtain loans. We invested all of our personal savings into the project and developing the farm.”
In the meantime, they built a small adobe brick plant with a capacity of 5,300 gallons and, in December 2011, released Pülku’s first batch—1,000 bottles—of sweet and dry ciders. Those were followed up in 2013 by Argentina’s first perry, made with Williams and Packham pears. By injecting fresh ideas into the century-old industry, they got the ball rolling.
The couple spent the first few years positioning Pülku as Argentina’s first craft cider brand, learning on the job while studying agriculture and production techniques online.
“Some of the challenges we faced were the lack of resources as well as the inability to obtain loans,” Caparros says. “We invested all of our personal savings into the project and developing the farm. Then, in 2016, Ernesto was diagnosed with prostate cancer.”
It’s March in Villa Regina, near the end of summer in Argentina, and the day’s fresh morning will turn hot and sticky by midday. We drive along dusty roads that cut through orchards, occasionally coming bumper-to-bumper with tractors. The harvest period here kicked off in January; it will conclude in April. The mother-and-daughter team still has to wait another year before their new orchards produce fruit; purchases from local organic farmers were used to make the 6,200 cases (about 13,200 gallons) they sold in 2022.
Williams pears from the Alto Valle were dropped off early that morning, and slim-framed Barrera is now wrestling with the lid of the stainless steel press, determined not to be beaten by machinery. “Ernesto was the brains behind all this,” says Caparros, waving her arms around the small plant. “Now we have Ernesto the Second,” pointing at Mariana Barrera, who is still fighting with the pesky lid.
By the time her father was diagnosed with cancer in 2016, Barrera had taken an urban planning master’s degree specializing in infrastructure at Harvard, and had returned to her native Argentina to take up a high-flying position with the federal government. “All I ever wanted to do was to change the world,” she says. “That’s the reason I wanted to become a politician. Pülku was my parents’ pet project. I didn’t even drink cider. I was busy with my own plan, studying and working, but because I’d seen that they were having economic troubles because of their investment, I never got involved.”
Coordinating ambitious infrastructure projects as national director at the Urban Planning Ministry in conjunction with the International Development Bank and the World Bank, Barrera managed the purse strings of a billion-dollar budget, signing off on projects to improve shanty towns on a seven-year plan, as well as approving budgets for ports and railways stations. Her plan was to complete this role in government before returning to the U.S. as a university fellow. Then her dad died.
Following the wildfires of 2017 that had devastated her parents’ orchards, and Ernesto Barrera’s two years of chemotherapy, Chacra Don Simón had been largely left to its own devices. A former employee smelled opportunity and squatted in one of the farmhouses for two years; Caparros and Barrera had to pay him off to vacate the property. Whenever they could, the couple had visited their favorite place in the world, but the challenges of treatment had left Ernesto unable to keep up with the physical labor of running a farm. Debts mounted, to the tune of $100,000, and Caparros was unable to keep up with basic administrative tasks while looking after her husband. Two weeks after Ernesto passed away in March 2018, Barrera stepped in to take care of the never-ending reams of bills and paperwork. Soon after, she set about creating a healthy business.
By 2019 she had left her day job to work at Pülku, supporting herself as a consultant for the World Bank and teaching a master’s program at Di Tella university in Buenos Aires, as well as at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.
In the aftermath of her father’s death and the mounting bills, the obvious decision was to sell, she recalls.
“I said to my brother and sister, ‘Let’s pay off the debts,’ but I realized that money wouldn’t actually go anywhere or pay off much,” she says. “Why? Because everything had caught fire. We didn’t have any fruit, the plant was halfway under construction, the machinery hadn't been maintained, we’d lost the harvest and we wouldn’t have any fruit the following year, we weren’t even set up as a limited company. Selling would have meant giving away my parents’ work. Literally. I didn’t want my mom to lose her home.”
And so began her double life, managing public works budgets by day and solving Pülku’s problems by night. For two years, she’d go to the ministry at 8 a.m., finish work, then visit bars, laden with clinking bottles, to meet owners and bartenders and taste cider with them till 4 in the morning. Or pay bills. Or complete the necessary legal paperwork required to sell products. The learning curve was vertical, given that she had no idea that cider and perry were even fermented products when she began. She enrolled in a sommelier program but dropped out fast, unable to keep up with the exhausting pace of a full-time day job, visiting the chacra, studying, and selling cider.
“It’s a family business, full of heart and soul but one that receives little support in general. Pülku is the kind of brand that makes us feel good. ”
Agricultural engineer Atilio Caverzan saw Mariana Barrera’s vertical takeoff, not long after she became involved with Pülku. He’d already been working with her mom, but Barrera’s commitment stood out. “Not only did she pick up on the valley’s idiosyncrasies, which includes the community and society, she was like a sponge during the learning period. The fact she was a total outsider to our system but got completely stuck in 100 percent without thinking twice about it caught my attention,” he says.
One key turning point was being invited as a guest speaker in Mendoza at the Festival Atlántico, a sustainable cocktail and bars conference organized by the owners of Florería Atlántico bar in Buenos Aires, where she and I met in 2019.
Pülku by this point had branched out to include ciders with elderberry and cassis—flavors with real Patagonian identity—as well as draft cider for a thirsty and demanding Basque community; it continued to be one of Argentina’s few craft cider makers. Florería’s owner, Tato Giovannoni, gave Barrera the space to talk up Pülku on a panel, and it worked. She quickly added to the small yet faithful client base that included renowned Buenos Aires-based restaurants such as Gran Dabbang and El Baqueano, as well as another leading bar, Tres Monos. For Tres Monos co-owner Sebastián Atienza, it was a no-brainer to include Pülku on the menu.
“It’s a family business, full of heart and soul but one that receives little support in general,” he says. “Pülku is the kind of brand that makes us feel good. Mariana and María Inés make great cider, and we need to push and support them—plus it’s reciprocal, because they do the same for our business.”
Part of Barrera’s journey has been creating a sustainable and healthy business, as well as a solid team based in this small agricultural town in remote Patagonia. Sure, it’s a very different scale from Barrera’s public works career, but it’s important to her own transformation from politics to finding satisfaction in the orchards.
“Although my office supported my decision to start dividing my time equally between Buenos Aires and Villa Regina, I’d started to realize it was a world with crossed incentives,” she says. “And when that administration came to a conclusion, it affected me a lot—because I was let down by what I had wanted in life, and everything I had thought about was in fact a lie. I realized I wasn’t cut out for politics.
“If you have a business and it’s going well, you make a transformation, right? You can have an impact, linked to nature, to the land, with the way you cultivate, how you work with your staff and how they work at your plant. The values that you share and communicate are fundamental in making a transformation. Organic cider is a space to propose, think, and create. I see it as a transformative space that contributes by showing something different. I’m obsessed with making a special product and obsessed with how we work from within, no matter how small our team is. That is hugely important.”
Bringing Pülku back from the ashes hasn’t been without its challenges, on many levels. Barrera admits she only started mourning her father almost four years later, and the build-up to that moment took a toll on her mental health. “Dad died and I literally had to get out there and start resolving problems,” she says. “No one cared if I was in mourning or had to go to the ministry, or that my mom was depressed. I didn’t even have a chance to mourn my dad. In December 2021, I reached a burnout point, and it lasted six weeks.
“Organic cider is a space to propose, think, and create. I see it as a transformative space that contributes by showing something different.”
“Even though there’s a lot of talk about well-being, few people talk about mental health. Today I feel good, and I’m moving forward little by little. I’ve recently just started to enjoy myself again.”
It shows. One of Pülku’s latest projects is Ruibarbo, a pear-and-rhubarb collaboration with Tres Monos, where Caparros comes into her own as master cider maker. The fleshy stalks are cultivated in parts of Patagonia; this particular juice comes from El Bolsón. Ruibarbo is the third cider to showcase the region’s identity, with the rhubarb’s edgy acidity leading the mouthfeel. Coming in both sweet and sour at just 4% ABV, it’s an unusual crowd pleaser. Caparros ferments with native yeasts, single pressing organic fruit from the region, and hopes to start using Pülku’s own fruit in 2024.
Atienza of Tres Monos sees the benefit of undertaking collaborations, whether it’s at a pop-up, guest shift or restaurant, because mutually helping each other means growing together as well as the plus of having one’s own products. “Given that lots of bars around the world make their own wine, I suggested to Mariana that we join forces to make cider. It’s wonderful to team up with people we admire and love, whom we want to help and learn from, and who we understand to be on the same path as us.”
Other fermented juices in Pülku’s portfolio include both Dulce (sweet) and Seca (dry) Red Delicious and Granny Smith blends, both of which come in at 5.5% ABV. Their amber hues bear golden reflections, offering plenty of fresh apple aromas, while Pülku’s Pera perry, made with organic Packham and Williams pears, has medium sugar levels and slightly lower alcohol at 4%. The Sauco elderberry and Cassis berry, each adding liqueur d’expédition— a winemaking technique originating in Champagne that replaces a dose of the lost alcohol—to Red Delicious and Granny Smith blends, boost the Patagonian identity even further.
Mother and daughter have also worked with the Río Negro Alto Valle branch of the national agricultural institute, cultivating cider-specific apple and pear varieties like Williams Favorite at Chacra Don Simón. It’s another way of contributing to and developing Argentina’s small craft industry.
Barrera says that she’s counting down the months until she and her mom pick their own fruit, and then get to try the cider they make from it.
“Of course, I know that the first harvest won’t be the best with regards to fruit for cider production—older trees are better producers—and I’m worried that the final product will be a letdown,” she says. “It makes me extremely happy but at the same time, it scares me. You never know what nature will give you.”
Words by Sorrel Moseley-WilliamsPhotos by Damian Liviciche
