Month: March 2016

Date Explored: January 28, 2016

Day 2 of our Casablanca Wine Tour consisted of three visits to very different vineyards. I kept a travel journal, and here is what I wrote about Day 1: “Late night, another early start. Three vineyards today. I feel the need for a relaxing night. Not so late and not as much booze.”

Hah!

You see, drinking gives me insomnia. It puts some people to sleep…

But it makes my mind too active. Too much brain activity, and I can’t sleep. I know, weird, huh?

Actually, that photo of my darling husband was taken while we were waiting for the first tour of the day to start . He was just pretending he was zoned out. It’s his “walking dead” imitation. Honest.

Casas de Bosque means Houses of the Forest and was the largest of the wineries we visited, especially in terms of being more of a production operation, from what I could tell. But then, we’ve already established that I’m ignorant in the ways of the grape.

Love the staining on the caskets in the photo below!

Or are those barrels?

Well, if you drink enough of the contents you might find yourself in a casket…..

Just sayin’.

I learned during our 2-day Chilean Wine Tour and Beyond (as in my sampling of many future bottles of wine bought during our 4-week trip) that (1) Chilean vineyards are a heck of a lot more generous with their “tasting” glasses of wine than Canadian wineries. (2) That it doesn’t matter how many times I try to “cultivate” my taste buds, I can not stomach CabSav. (3) That there IS a red grape I actually like!!! It’s called Carmenere, and it originated in France but is now rarely found there. Chile grows masses of the Carmenere grape and uses it in red blends I quickly discovered were my favorite (if I have to have a favorite). I used to think “blends” were all the crappy grapes tossed together, but now, yes, now I have been educated. Blends are often the grape de la grape, the cream of the crop, especially when they include some Carmenere. I still can’t down an entire glass in two hours or less, but I can give it a good shot and make it about a quarter-way.

If you live in an area that grows some Carmenere (like California or Washington), give it a try.

Note, I discovered I love the “bouquet” of wine. The sniffing part. The swirling in the glass. It’s when I swallow the stuff that I have an issue. You know what they refer to as the aftertaste or whatever? That’s when it really hits me and I just…shiver. I guess I didn’t burn off enough of my taste buds at the back of my tongue as a kid to make an adequate connoisseur of wine. That’s my reasoning, and I’m sticking to it.

Our tasting at Casas de Bosque was held in a little room with folks from the U.S. and Europe. From there, Antonio (the designated driver) took us to Matetic Vineyards which, even by my picky standards (“Where’s the Pinot Gris?”), had some pretty good wine (but, alas, I could only sip, not quaff). Matetic is an organic winery, but a biodynamic organic winery, which means they have to adhere to very strict guidelines that a place like Emiliana from the prior day would adhere to, but then more standards on top of that. It really is very interesting and includes paying attention to equinoxes and solstices. Visit this link for more information.

We enjoyed lunch at Matetic. I had a fish dish with “bottoms of avocado” and olives. It was delicious.

We were quickly discovering that Chilean food is freaking fantastic.

I had ceviche (raw fish marinated in lime, etc.) for the first time at Matetic and quite enjoyed it. I am not at the point where I could eat a whole order of ceviche to myself, but I am certainly capable of stealing from others’ plates.

Winery #4 was very different. We nearly didn’t go, because we were all pretty wiped and Antonio still had to drive us to our hotel in Valparaiso, across the bay from where we stayed the night before in Vina del Mar. But we drew ourselves up by our sandal straps and continued on to Bodega Re, and I’m so glad we did, because this fourth vineyard was totally different from the rest. Bodega Re combines grapes and blends in unique fashions. Example, I liked the rose they called Pinotel, which was a combination of Pinot Noir (another red wine I can stomach, but usually gives me monster headaches) and Muscatel.

Really, Bodega Re provides such huge portions for their “tastings,” it’s like drinking a bottle of wine all to yourself. While I enjoyed the wine, it being my fourth winery visit in two days I sampled very teensy portions and filled up on cheese. But we bought a bottle of the Pinotel for “Cindy” to enjoy later on….

A lot of words for this day. Sorry about that. But if you’ve read this far, here’s a nice picture of the cool Chilean fences we saw both on our way to Valparaiso and on Chiloe Island a couple of weeks later. If you’re looking for a “basket-weave” style fence for your yard, here’s a sample. Ain’t it cute?

Date Explored: January 27, 2016

After recovering from three long flights to get to Santiago, including a 9-hour overnight flight, on Wednesday morning our foursome was picked up by the always cheerful Antonio from Private Tours Chile for a half-day tour of Santiago and a visit to Emiliana Organic Vineyards in the Casablanca Wine Valley. Our visit to Emiliana was the first of four vineyard visits over two days. If you’re thinking about touring around Santiago, be sure to check out Leo Cuzmar’s site. He’s the guy in charge of Private Tours Chile and they do a great job, but I found it a little difficult, after hearing about Leo’s business on Trip Advisor, to find the website. So now that I’ve provided it, bookmark it!

Let me say again that Antonio was amazing. Friendly, helpful, always a smile on his face, chock-full of information, the kind of guy you want to take to lunch (and we did). The half-day city tour of Santiago was just enough for me, especially considering that this was our third time in South America. I liked what Antonio showed us of Santiago, but really we were itching to get to wine country, and I don’t even like most wines. But I wanted to spread my wings, try to educate my taste buds, and my comrades were already way ahead of me in that department.

Before we could proceed to the tasting, however, we had to tour the vineyard. Emiliana employs a lot of different methods to protect their grapes, including growing flowers and shrubs that pests will attack before getting to the vines, keeping llamas to “mow” the lawn, and employing tons of chickens to eat the insects.

The Emiliana vineyard we visited doesn’t do any wine production. That was carried out elsewhere. So when you visit, you’re pretty much focused on the vineyard. The wine house, whatever you might call it (are we picking up my ignorance here?) was empty when we had our tasting. I enjoyed the tasting very much. I’m just not meant to quaff four glasses of wine in short order. Not to worry, the other members of my troupe were very, um, adept at picking up the slack for me.

The cheese was very, very good.

Everyone was very happy following this tour. We had already figured out that Chileans eat “lunch” late by North American standards. Our guide Antonio suggested we stop at a little local Casablanca eatery en route to our hotel in Vina del Mar, on the Pacific Ocean. We all had Pastel de Choclo, also known as Corn Pie, a hot casserole of chicken, boiled egg, raisins, ground beef and olives, topped with corn. It was excellent and hearty, but the portions were huge! (This was also going to become a recurring theme. Chileans don’t scrimp on wine or food portions. Honestly, you can get away with splitting a meal easily).

In Vina del Mar, we stayed at an old hotel on the rocks, right down by the water, called The Oceanic. I don’t know about you, but I like some character in my hotels, so we usually go for “boutique hotels,” and during this trip we really tried to mix it up. I don’t have any photos of The Oceanic, but you can check out their website. Or admire this sunset, taken from the balcony of our room:

 

It’s been a few trips since I did any travel blogging. The last time was Galapagos, I believe, 2012. Since then, my husband and I have traveled to China, Australia and Cuba, but for various and sundry reasons (beginning with the death of a family member in the days upon our return from China in 2013) I didn’t get around to it. Too bad, because I love organizing my memories this way, but blogging about travel when a loved one has just died seems in poor taste.

Fast forward to this year–we’ve recently returned from what we are looking upon as the “last” of our “big” adventures. The Aus trip was 4 weeks and so followed this year, a marathon of a holiday that took us from Santiago, Chile down to Patagonia and ending up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. For the most part, I’m going to let the photos speak for themselves (let’s see how good I am at that).

It took 2 days to travel from B.C. via Calgary and Houston to Santiago, Chile, including an overnight stay in Calgary so we wouldn’t stress about missing the next day’s flight due to winter weather. We stayed in Santiago two nights, at a gem of a place called the Matildas. It’s in a pretty old neighborhood of Santiago, but what charm!

Over the next four weeks, I would learn that when a Chilean menu says “avocado and hearts of palm,” that’s exactly what you’ll get. Nothing extra. I once ordered a salad to share with my husband that was described as “tomato, onion and Something Else.” Alas, I can not recall what the Something Else was, but dang if the salad contained tomato, onion and Something Else, and that was it. If you want a mixed salad, you have to order carefully. Because a description of “lettuce” will net you lettuce and only lettuce.

I also ate tongue this first night, just a bite, nothing crazy. We traveled with my sister-in-law and her dh. He ordered the tongue, so I had a taste. Not bad. If I hadn’t known I was eating tongue I might have barely noticed the spongy texture (texture can make or break food for me; I’ve never claimed to have sophisticated tastes). BILly claims his palate is much more adventurous than mine, but really I have more advanced taste buds capable of discerning a tongue from a rump (but that’s a debate best left for another time).

Our Fearless Foursome hit the sack early (11 p.m. or so, early by South American standards) because the next morning a guide was picking us up for a half-day city tour and transporting us to the Casablanca wine valley, where we visited four wineries in two days. A lovely time was had by all, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who remembers….