Advertisement
Published: January 15th 2015
Edit Blog Post
DSCN1027
pedal wine bar. we need one of these for Carolina beach On Tuesday, we had to leave the Eco Camp for our 5 hour drive to Punta Arenas and then a 3.5 hour flight to Santiago. We got to our hotel (same one we stayed before with the wine cellar) about 9pm. It was a long travel day. We were tired and just stayed in had a glass of wine and cheese for dinner and then crashed.
Wed morning we woke and had a good breakfast, then they picked us up for the bike and wine tour. We drove thru Santiago a bit picking up others and then had about a 50 minute drive to breakfast. I slept a bit in the car. Another breakfast??? We got to the restaurant and they were also a bird rescue. We saw all kinds of birds and a very friendly dog. At breakfast we started meeting everyone else on the excursion. There was an Ausie couple, a guy from Paris and a lady from Italy. We had 2 guides and a driver. The biking has to be done before the wine tasting as Chile has a 0 tolerance for drinking even for biking. You can’t have any drinks and drive. We bike
DSCN1033
look at the bar stools all thru the vineyard and were told all about the wine making process and all about the history of Carmenere, the most popular variety of wine in Chile. It seems that some vines of it had been mixed in many years ago when they took roots from Europe. Then all the vines in Europe died and the world thought it was extinct. The Chilean’s thought it was merlot (and it was planted in with the merlot grapes) In the 90s a wine judge in Europe said the Merlot from Chile was different and came here to test. It was then they discovered it was the Camenere grape. It was split from the merlot plantings and they created new fields that only grew Camenere grapes. It was an interesting story.
There is also a story for the Santa Rita vineyard about 120 soldiers that were hidden here during the revolution in the early 1800s when Chile became independent. We then had our wine tasting with cheese and crackers. The wines were good and we had a blast with our group, especially with the Ausies. We did get a bit rushed at the end but we just took our
wine glasses with us as we walked thru the shop (even though we weren’t supposed to). We bought a couple bottles of wine to take to Valparaiso as we will be there 4 days and you’re supposed to bring your own bottle of wine to the roof deck to relax.
Our group then headed to lunch. The tour group was trying a new place and this one was great. Our guides had bought 2 bottles of wine to share. We ate outside by the pool then after lunch, we all took off our shoes and stuck our feet in the water and just chatted.
We then had the 50 minute drive back and I think we all slept. We didn’t make it back to the hotel until around 7:30 – 8:00. Again we decided to just chill, have wine and cheese for dinner and catch up on email…
Today we leave for Valparaiso. We will take the local bus. It’s about a 2 hour drive.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.049s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0268s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb