We finally made it to Chile... |
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| we have tried for a couple of years and this was the
year that we could bring it all together. Yes, the country of Chile,
way down there in South America, a very LOONNGG, skinny country with
the Pacific Ocean on the west side and the beautifully majestic
Andes Mountains on the east side. If you are looking for the Wine stuff, click here :) I need to thank a few people, Al Franzke (b-in-law) for all of his hard work putting the trip together. He made lots of call and emails to friends putting all of the fun together that we had. Al also shared some air miles so that all four of us (Al, Teresa, Jim and myself) could come back in style in the business class section of the trip from Santiago to Dallas, TX! It was a life (and back) saver! I also need to thank Al's business partners, Guillermo & his son Mito (Guillermo Jr.). They shared their homes, their families and their time with us, which made the trip that much more enjoyable. We left Portland, OR one hour late (due to thunderstorms in Dallas) in the afternoon, heading for Dallas, TX to switch planes for the long 9 1/2 hour flight to Santiago, Chile. We switched planes again (with a long delay because they lost Jim's and my reservations...) in Santiago to the city of Concepcion. This is our "headquarters" for our trip. It just also happens to be where Al's business partners live and work. |
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Waiting, waiting in the Portland airport |
sisters, beautiful sisters... |
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| Teresa & Al waiting for the elevator to get their bags from arrival to departure... there are two elevators, but usually only one is working! | here we are waiting at the top for them to join us to continue down to the departures |
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| Al in the lead, getting us to where we need to go, he was on auto-pilot, he does this trip about 5 times a year. | driving to our hotel in Concepcion, Chile. it doesn't look any different from any other city... |
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| the view from our room at the hotel, behind the tall glass building is part of the Port of Concepcion... | dinner with Al's work buddies, Mito is taking the picture... |
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Enjoying the Colchauga Wine Region That was our first day in Chile, we truly enjoyed meeting all of Al's work partners and friends, the dinner was great, and we had our first official Pisco Sour, the "national" drink of Chile (well, not official, but they will tell you that). We high-tailed ourselves back to the hotel to get some sleep, we had to be up and out the door with all of our luggage at 6:00am for our first day of wine tasting adventures. We hit the road, head north to the Colchagua Valley (between Santiago and Concepcion) where they are famous for red wines. We are to pick up our wine guide, Charles Pestridge, standing on the side of the highway in front of the Nestle plant (yeah, the same as, "nestle makes the very best, chocccccc lateeeeeee"). We are sure we passed him, but we keep going a little further and then, viola! there he is! The three wineries for the day are:
Charles has made all the reservations for us to get full tours and tasting at 7 wineries. We were hoping to do an 8th one on the third day, but Casa Lapostolle was closed until Sept. Remember, we are in the latter part of winter here/very early spring, there is a little green starting to show on the grape vines, but all of the vineyards are still in the process of pruning. VOE is an organic winery & vineyards. The grounds are gorgeous, they even do the bio-dynamic growing and harvesting of their grapes. They bury a cows horn and harvest the grapes depending on the moons cycles... I am not so sure about this process, but many vineyards are getting into this all over the world. |
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| part of the organic fertilizing and bug control, they let chickens run in the vineyards. they actually have chicken coops on rollers, they move them around to various parts of the vineyard to keep the chickens "on the move". The winery buildings are in the background. | part of the "Fung Shui" of the winery and wine making process, this is a beautiful curved, all wood, staircase. |
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| here we are at the top, where they use gravity fed processing of the wine, all grapes, grape juice, etc is lifted up here over the sides and then is allowed to drain into the stainless tanks (under the caps) for fermentation. | looking towards the tasting room and offices from the winery buildings, across some of the vineyards. you can see lots of cut grape vines on the ground where they have been pruning the vineyard. |
| Viu Manet was a great place to tour, taste and eat
lunch! They have a restaurant on the grounds, we were the only
ones eating lunch on that day. It was VERY cold in the
restaurant, even the servers were sidling up to the wood stoves in
the corners. It was worth it though, the food was excellent
and I would recommend it to everyone. The wine is awesome too,
we drank a LOT of Viu Manet Carmenere wine while in Chile (along
with a few others too).
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| The doors are beckoning us in to the main part of Viu Manet winery. | This is a really old oak barrel that is no longer in use (it is inside the restaurant), but many old wineries still use these style of barrels as neutral barrels for aging wines. |
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| checking out the restaurant prior to our tour and lunch. | This is the horse drawn carriage that we used to tour the vineyards and to hear about the family that owns Via Manet. |
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| The big red "thing" is a fermentation tank made from concrete. They hold the temperature very well and can be controlled. They are used in many of the wineries in Chile. | first in line for a taste of white wine directly from the stainless fermenting tank. |
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| a few bottles aging gracefully at Viu Manet, this is part of their library of old wines. | The all important purchase of great wine :) it is actually cheaper to purchase wine at the winery than elsewhere, so different than the states. |
| After a great tour and lunch at Viu Manet, we head
to our last destination for the day. Montes, probably one of
the more notable Chilean wineries that you may have heard of.
Charles had worked at Montes before he started his own guide
business. He started up the tour & visitors process for the winery.
He knows just about everyone there, and knows all the ins & outs of
how Montes works, the facts and figures, he is a walking Montes
encyclopedia.
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| one of the buildings on the property with the depiction of the angel that is on many of their labels. | the front of the tasting room, offices and winery. If it looks familiar, it may, because the same architect who designed this also designed Artesa in Napa, California. |
| If you look carefully, you might see some heads on the 2nd floor of the winery above through the glass. Aurelio Montes and his other winemakers were up there doing individual barrel tasting trying to figure out what barrels will blended in what percentage to make up the next vintage. They tasted over 100 barrels that day. Aurelio came down to say hello while we were tasting (see picture below), his mouth and teeth were literally black from all the wine he had tasted.
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| looking down at the building from a great vantage point. Montes has thousands of acres of vines... | here are the worlds greatest wine tasters above Montes. they use this for small parties, and group gatherings. |
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| Montes also uses gravity fed wine making process, here we are up on the top able to look down over all the stainless used for fermentation. | One of the barrel rooms, it is built like a small amphitheatre. There was a group of musicians touring the winery and they had to run out and get their instruments so that they could play in here the acoustics were so much fun. |
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| waiting, waiting for the wine to show up for the tasting... | Teresa having fun with the Montes truck... |
| After a great day of tasting we head to our hotel
for the next couple of nights. We are staying in Santa Cruz at
one of the nicest hotels in the whole central part of Chile.
One of Al's partners pulled in some favors and got us each a Junior
Suite at a reduced price! It was a great place to spend the
evening after a long (wonderful) day of wine tasting. We ate
dinner in the restaurant the first night, the food was very good.
As we walked in to our table, we noticed sitting by the fireplace
were several gentlemen enjoying a few bottles of beer. They
happened to be Aurillo Montes and his other wine makers. It
takes a lot of beer to make great wine and they were definitely
making up for all the wine they had tasted during the day!
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| part of the restaurant and some of the rooms at Santa Cruz. | Our room, sorry I didn't get the picture before we made a mess of it :) |
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| the deck off the room, too bad it was too cold to enjoy... | the sunrise off the balcony... |
| The next day we don't have to get up quite so early, Charles is meeting us in the breakfast room at 8:45am for a cup of coffee so that we can take off at 9:00am. | |
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