After the Christmas festivities it was time to head to our next destination - the Colchagua Valley near Santa Cruz. We decided to take the scenic route, which meant we took the country roads and had to rely on a combination of maps, hand written instructions, a temperamental GPS connection and my sense of direction! We only had to turn round twice (once I had decided we should have taken the turn we had just passed). The closer we got to this fruit growing and wine producing region the greener the fields became.
We had read that Santa Cruz was not a very exciting town, so we stayed outside in a small bed and breakfast with a tropical oasis of a garden, friendly owners and equally friendly guests. We enjoyed a late afternoon welcome drink by the swimming pool with our kindles. Then Nick was in need of some real American food so we found a hole in the wall in the middle of a residential area for a beer and a burger.
Traditional America food!
The valley is known for its wineries, however, they had a different feel to the wineries we had visited in Mendoza. First, they all required reservations, secondly the wine produced was led by market demands rather than the passions of the owners and thirdly they all tried to differentiate themselves from each other by specialising in different wines and offering different activities on-site including horse jumping competitions (to attract Chilean tourists), make your own wine, and singing under the stars! The week between Christmas and New Year is also their busiest time. Having decided that 4 wineries in one day was too many, we opted to visit 2 wineries Viu Manent and Mont Gras.
Viu Manent is a family run, commercially slick operation. We headed off in a horse and cart for a tour of the vineyards, production area, cellar and a tasting. A highlight was the Secreto brand which they can only tell you 85% of what is in the wine - the rest is a surprise (and legally they don't have to declare what it is)!
Why don't we see more barrel art?
Our tour was followed by a delicious lunch at Viu Manent's restaurant called Rayuela (which means hopscotch - a useful addition to our Spanish vocab!).
Tuna ceviche & pork terrine with pebre
Mont Gras is a smaller, but also well known, winery. We had a short tour and longer tasting here with some food pairings. We particularly enjoyed their Sauvignon Blanc and their Carmenere/Cabernet Sauvignon blend. With a sale of 30% off we took this opportunity to buy a couple of bottles of wine for the upcoming new year's celebrations!
Mont Gras and its produce
Desperate times call for desperate measures, drinking from the vat (they told us to do it and it is harder than it looks!)
By now we have heard several versions of the story about Carmenere (which Chileans are proud to tell) which is a grape that originates from France but has broadly been killed off in France. It has been grown in Chile for the last 150 years, but everyone thought it was Merlot until in 1994 a French expert working in Chile realised that Carmenere and Merlot were growing alongside each other and were actually different grapes. One of our winery tour guides pointed out that many Chilean Merlots that had won awards before the rediscovery of Carmenere were probably not pure Merlots, but they were not going to dwell on that now!
On balance, I preferred the Argentinian Malbecs to the Chilean red wines we tried, but I should probably be careful what I say whilst I am still on Chilean soil! [post edit note: having just enjoyed a half bottle of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon/Carmenere blend I may have been too quick to judge the Chilean wines!].
The evening was spent cooling off in the swimming pool and watching a young looking George Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou. It was only on reading the Wikipedia entry afterwards that I realised this Cohen brothers film was based on Homer's the Odysessy and I have now concluded that much of film was lost on me! This only added to my recent disappointment when a fellow traveler in Valparaiso who works in the film industry in LA shared that GC is "a bit of a jerk" in real life. On that note, I am off to bed!
- Jess
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