Chilean Wine Country

A view from the top of Montes Winery

Sarita and I booked a daytrip from Santiago to the famous Colchagua valley of Chile and ended up getting a private tour of 3 vineyards.  We enjoyed it so much that we signed up for another trip to a different wine valley the next day, this time letting the tour company pick out the vineyards.  Our driver was nice enough, but was directionally challenged.  I get the impression his normal beat is tours of Santiago instead of day trips to wine country.    He warmed up to us eventually.

We visited three wineries in Colchagua Valley: Lapostolle, MontGras and Montes.  This valley is known for its reds (see the Carmenere story below) and the wines from this day were hands down our favorites.  The next day, we had three more tours, lunch at a 4th in the Casablanca Valley: Indomita, Casa Vina and Casas del Bosques, with lunch at Vina Mar and a stop at a large store/souvenir shop. Casablanca Valley is known for its white wines and Pinot Noirs.    The wineries themselves in Casablanca were beautiful, and much more industrial.

If you like wine . . .keep reading. If you aren't a wine lover, then just read the history of Carmenere and enjoy the pictures.

Colchagua Valley

Our first wine tour was at Lapostolle.  This winery is pristine and luxurious - their moto is something like Chilean by Birth, French in Essence.  They are owned by the same family that makes Grand Marnier in France. Our guide was very funny and kept us laughing the whole way.  Lapostolle lovingly crafts their Clos Apalta wines using soley manual methods - hand harvested, hand destemmed, 100% gravity fed, etc.  This is the families flagship winery, and only produces very very small amounts every year.   They also use 100% new French Oak every year.  Their vintage won Wine Spectator's wine of the year in 2005.  And you can buy the 2012 vintage for a mere $120 a bottle.  (We didn't buy any)

The Lapostolle's central
stairecase.  Everything
 is gravity fed

In the Lapostolle tasting room

This is about as
artsy as I get :)

from the top of Lapostolle

Next stop was MontGras winery.  They gave a fantastically unique tour!  They have grown rows and rows of grapes from all around the world just so visitors like us can compare the leaves and grape clusters to see the difference between the varietals.  You can also see why Carmenere was mistaken as Merlot for so many years. Now it is the signature grape of Chile.

The history of Carmenere:  

Many years ago, the phylloxera devastated vineyards all over the world, including vines across France.   Several French varieties were believed to have gone extinct.  In 1992, a Frenchman was shocked to discover a vine he had only seen in textbooks mixed into the Merlot vineyards of Chile.  It turns out that Chile is geographically isolated from the pests that killed vineyards across the world.  When France sent vines to Chile many many years ago, they mistakenly mixed in some Carmenere, which was fortuitous because it meant Carmenere survived, mixed in with all the Merlot vineyards. Carmenere is still unusually sensitive to the pheloxera, even grafted.  So Chile is the only significant producer of this medium-bodied, slightly spicey wine today. 

The wines at MontGras were much more reasonably priced and I definitely enjoyed this degustastation.  Maybe it was because they were pouring 4 1/2 glasses and serving food during the tasting and we had inadvertently skipped breakfast and lunch at this point.  The guide during the degustation was very animated, and passed out souvenirs for everybody.  I ended up going home with a wine pourer and wine drip preventer.   These guys also seemed to offer the full tourist experience if you wanted it - meals with wine pairings, blend your own wine excursions, and horseback rides through the vineyards were all available.

In the vinyards

They let us drink
straight from the tank!

Our last tour of the day was at Montes and was again a very different experience.  We got a private English tour and felt like we were just one of the crew, getting to see the destemming machine on top of the roof and a private tasting next to the cellar room that was playing Gregorian chants. This winery was started by 4 friends, and is available in Costco of all places! (and in another 109 countries) They use dry farming, which must be difficult in this arid region. The entire facility was stunningly beautiful, but well thought out and very practical.  I loved it.  For example, why tunnel 5 stories into a hell when you can just install an elevator for gravity feeding? And they had the "eggs" which she called the technology of the future.  We saw the eggs again the next day in Casablanca Valley.   The tasting had a rocky start with me breaking a wine glass but all was forgiven and we liked the wine so much that we each bought a couple of bottles.

Another great view from Montes

Are eggs the way of the future?

Mine!  All mine!
Gregorian Chants help the wine age?

Casablanca Valley

Our first stop on day #2 in wine country was apparently a tour freebie.  We would probably have chosen to sleep later if we had known about it in advance.  If you ever want to buy wine from Colchagua, Casablanca, or Maipo valleys, you can buy it all in one spot at Rio Tinto.

Our first winery tour was House Casa del Vina (Morande).  We got a little lost on the way, and showed up a little late, but they graciously gave us a tour anyway.  It was an interesting place.  As I mentioned above, all the wineries we visited in Casablanca were more industrial by nature.  These guys seemed to be striving for two things: economical wine production (wine making methods were industrial) and experimenting with wine.  This one winery produces wine for many different labels, and is proud to be experimenting with methods and grapes (like Paiz).  If you want interesting wine, then go here. Otherwise, the other wineries may suit you more. We happened to run into 3 other Houstonites in the tasting room at Casa Vina.  Three UofH [MBA?] students have a week-long stint working with a company in Santiago. They flew down a few days early to tour around and  wasted no time after arriving that morning before drove out to the wineries.

Our next stop was across the highway Indomita. This big beautiful white building is perched up on a hill overlooking the whole Casablanca valley.   It was the biggest winery we visited, and also produces wine for multiple labels.  Apparently all the grapes produced from Colchagua and Maipo are brought here as well for this wine maker and the tasting included wines from all of them.  If you want to see how wine is made on a large scale, or eat lunch with a great view of the valley, then come here . . . but make reservations.  We didn't make reservations for lunch and were referred to the winery next door (Vina Mar) which turned out to also a beautiful venue.  There, we were joined for lunch by Hein, a Dutchman who was part of our English tour at Indomita.  He was vacationing for a few days on his own after coming to Chile for work earlier that week.  He proved to be well traveled and shared some very insightful stories from his journeys.  The food was good, the venue was beautiful, and my Pinot from Vina Mar was delicious.

A view of Indomita from the highway
perched up on a hill.

A view from the top of the hill
Doesn't the Chilean flag
resemble the Texas flag?

A view from inside Vina Mar

We parted ways with Hein before making our last stop at Casas del Bosques.  In keeping with our pattern for the day, we showed up late and so got a semi-private tour after the tasting.  Happily they were pouring stuff from Casablanca Valley during the tasting and these were some of the best wines we tasted that day.  Casas del Basques is also a venue that seems to provide the entire tourist experience.  You can rent bikes from them, hold events there, or nosh overlooking the beautiful courtyard and vinyards.  They also had a great gift ship and seemed to be cranking people through tours.   If I were staying in Casablanca, I would have enjoyed spending more time at this very classy and tranquil venue.

In front of the winery

Overlooking the freshly cut vines
They finished cutting them 2 hours
earlier, which means we
got a great view!

Very peaceful.

One thing I thought was funny was how many Chilean wines featured stickers with points on them.  I'm' used to seeing point from Wine Spectator, or maybe Wine Advocate/Robert Parker.  Everything else is just the store's advertising.  Chile is relatively new to the wine industry, and is still finding its identity. One of our tour guides explained that the Chilean distributors learned the hard way that their customers wanted to see how many points each bottle rated before they would buy.  So now they all have points. . . . like the Outer Limits bottle that I bought at Montes (for cheap!) Has a 92 point rating from JamesSuckling.com. Another had 91 points from DesCorChaDos . . . be careful who's counting points.  

Something else I found funny was that multiple wineries bragged about using only women to destem their grapes by hand.  I don't know if this is sexism or just cheaper labor, but three of the wineries commented on it over 2 days.

Another fun fact is that Chile's main tourism source and wine consumer is their neighbor, Brazil.  We saw hordes of Chilean and Brazilian tour groups coming through the Casablanca wineries while we were there. In fact, anglo faces were not that common anywhere we went in Chile. 

We finished two full days in gorgeous wine country.  I came away glad that you can still find very cheap and good wine in Chile.  That means I can enjoy this habit without spending an arm and a leg when I get back home.

Next Stop: Back to Santiago for dinner