16/04/07

---

Got up early (9:00am) and caught he bus to Maipu which is where all the Bodegas are. We hired a bike each, and started our day of wine tasteing and cycling. The map we were given had been photocopied extremely badly, so it was lacking any names, roads or distances which rendered it completely useless. We had a roug idea where to go, but no idea on the distances so we set off anyway. 1 hour of intense cycling later, we had arrived at the furthest vineyard on the map which we were told was over 12 kilometres away. When we arrived, there was already a tour in progress with a group of about 8 people in the reception area having there free wine tasting. We listened in to hear choruses of "mmm, oakey" and "I´m getting a subtle green tinge" (How you can smell the colour green is beyond me), so we thought we may be out of our league with a bunch of wine snobs. After we had the tour of the barn where the wine is made, and taught exactly how each wine is made, we headed off to the reception area to try a couple of their wines. Fortunately we were only with 1 other couple in a group of 4 who seemed really nice. After the girl had poured us a taster each, we all picked up the glasses confidently, only to all look at each other and say "so errr, what do we do now?" The girl laughed, and explained that as we were only tasting a rose first, there was no real trick, just drink it. The next 2 wines were red, and we were told how we´re supposed to have a deep sniff of it first to smell it with the alcohol, then swirl it around before sniffing it again to experience it with the alcohol released (They both smelt pretty similar to me, but we all nodded and said how we could really notice the difference). She also told us how the final wine we tried was very oakey, which is something i had always wanted to say.

When the tasting had finished, we walked outside only to discover I had a puncture. We stood looking at the puncture for 10 minutes before we asked the girl to phone our bike company to come and help. After the man finally turned up, it was already 2:30, and we only had the bikes until 4pm plus we had only been to 1 bodega, and we were still 12 km away from our bike rental place. Things were´t going to plan. We ended up going to 1 more bodega, but not having enough time for the tasting, so we planned to come back later in the week to try a couple more, but definately without the bikes.

---