So being that I live in a town literally called "Vineyard by the Sea" it seems only fitting that I explore the local wine scene here in Chile. Luckily for me, Kindra's host brother Felipe and his girlfriend Aranza arrange tours to the vineyards of Casablanca, about a 45 minute drive towards Santiago from Vina.
We left around 10 am and drove first to the church Lo Vasquez. It's a very popular church located directly inbetween Vina and Casablanca and apparently many people will even walk the long distance from Vina to attend Mass here. Since it was Sunday, we sat in on a few minutes of the Mass which was truthfully pretty uneventful but interesting nonetheless.
We continued on to Casablanca and toured two vineyards. Vina Andomida and Vina Mar. The first tour was in English, but the rest of our day unfolded in Spanish. It was really fun to see how the whole process works. Harvest season here is March/April so the grapes were all ripe and delicious and everything was processing and working inside the vineyards. This is truly their busy season with many seasonal employees around since all the grapes are handpicked. Yet somehow, there was an air of simple tranquility that permeated every corner of Casablanca. We would tour the whole vineyard, learn about how they made their special wines, and then we would taste it! It wasn't just one of these 'swirl it in your mouth and spit it out' deals either. We drank 7 or 8 full glasses of wine throughout the day! They would give us the glasses, explain what to look for/taste for/smell for and how to taste it/hold it/swirl it/smell it/drink it properly and then leave us to enjoy the sunshine and the view...and of course the wine.
After these first two tours we went back to Aranza's family's house where Felipe had been busy cooking us lunch. We had a ridiculous amount of bread, homemade salsa, emanadas, and choclo(those tamale type things that are wrapped and cooked in a cornhusk packet...I can't remember what the English name is...). After that we waddled on over to the final vineyard tour.
The last one was easily my favorite, Vina Casas del Bosque. It was much smaller than the others and had a very friendly/relaxed vibe. There were a lot of kids playing and laughing and the tour guide was very personable. Their Merlot was also excellent, how fun to be able to say that!
At this point, we were all quite tuckered out from our hard day of wine, grapes, sunshine and conversation so we hopped in the car and returned to our own Vina del Mar.
I've posted the pictures from this adventure and also from my hike in La Campana on Photobucket. The link below will take you to my main page and if you look on the lefthand side you will see the links to the albums. They are entitled La Campana and Vino en Vina and should have accompanying descriptions under each photo.
http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg297/ClareHansen/
Chao for now-
Clare
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment