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?
