Concha y Toro

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After lunch, by the way lunch here is traditionally around 1:30 PM, we continued on to the Concha y Toro vineyard which was further out of the City.

This experience was totally different. Here we were not shown quite in such detail the steps of the production, but we did tour the cellars which were gigantic compared to the doll sized Vina Aquitania. Although the tour was very thorough and informative, the schedule and pace was pre arranged and fairly impersonal. But I am not sorry I went because it is quite an impressive enterprise. The grounds there are also beautiful, in a fairly majestic way, and here too a lot of care goes into the quality of their grapes. They have an area where they cultivate a patch of every type of grape, for quality control, to see how they are growing, etc. Here we saw the grape that had disappeared in France in the 1800s due to an infection, and was rediscovered untouched by disease in Chile at a vineyard called Carmen in 1964. The grape was renamed Carmenet and, so far, it has only prospered in Chile. It has failed everywhere else.

It was this wine the second wine we tasted. The first one was a Chardonnay. Both of them were good.

We did go down to the famous Casillero del Diablo cellars, which were impressive. Just the construction, and the depth underground were interesting enough, but the presentation, the showmanship of the dramatic lights and fun method of introducing us to the history of the name and the reason for it, made it quite fun. Apparently, the original owner kept his best wines there and, to keep them from being stolen, painted the image of the diablo (devil) on the far wall to keep the superstitious peasants away from his bottles.

All in all, although it did not have the intimate experience of the smaller vineyard, and we did not see as many aspects of the production, Concha y Toro had a bit more of a spectacle built into the tour. I only wish it had been a bit more leisured. They start a tour every half an hour, or fifteen minutes I am not quite sure, and they keep you to that schedule, just barely ahead of the next group.

Although the portions of the tasting were generous, I was a bit disappointed we only tasted two of the wines. That was hardly worth giving up my Pisco Sour for!

Sigh!

Another day going down as a memorable experience.

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