Casablanca Valley

My final blog post catching up from the fun weekend!! :)

Chile is famous for being home to some of the best wine country in the world so on Sunday, Katie, Natalie, Mahathi and I went to Casablanca Valley on a wine tour to visit a few of the vineyards!

We booked it through a tour company so they came and picked us up and drove us the hour to Casablanca. The first vineyard we visited was Casas del Bosque, and it was a HUGE vineyard with beautiful scenery. There was frost on the ground when we arrived around 10:30 which was crazy. We got to have a tour of the vineyard and see the fields of grapes and also got to learn about growing them, the harvest, and then see the factory and how they ferment them, store them, and bottle them. I learned SO much about wine and all the work that goes into it and it really made me appreciate it a lot more! It is no easy task. This was a huge vineyard that produces over a million bottles a year and exports to countries all around the world. Then we got to go inside and do some wine tasting. Our guide explained the different wines to us, the differences in the grapes and fermentation time/process, and how/why it has the taste and aroma it does. 

Here is a pic collage of the wines we had at Casas del Bosque: Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Syrah. We also got to keep a little book with more info about them and what foods they go well with! I loved all three of them, but I think the Sauv Blanc was my favorite one. I am a total white wine person.

Here are a few pics from the wine building! The bottling machine and some of the storage barrels! They store different wines in different types of barrels depending on the type because it soaks up aromas from the barrels. A lot of the white wines never even get put into barrels.

Second we stopped at Emiliana Organic Vineyard, which was a beautiful vineyard that also had llamas, chickens, and bees! All the animals play somewhat of a role in the wine making process which is cool too. They are the largest organic vineyard in the entire world! We got to walk around the vineyard and explore, but did not really have an official tour. Then we did a wine tasting there too. We were at a big table with some other people too, and they were from Brazil so they spoke Portuguese! I was actually so impressed at how I was able to understand what they were saying. It makes me really want to learn Portuguese too because it is SO similar and I think I could pick it up pretty quickly. The wine there was SUPER good and our wine guide was amazing. He was super nice and fun and made it a good experience. 

Here are the wines we had at Emiliana! We had a Chardonnay, Rosé, Carmenere, and Coyam. Carmenere is a HUGE wine here because Chile is the only country that produces it. It used to be only in France, and then they got a virus or something which eradicated that type of grape and they thought it was gone from the world forever. But then once they started doing some genetic grape testing, they found that Carmenere is alive and thriving here in Chile! Because of this, the customs to enter Chile are SUPER strict and you cannot bring any fruits or vegetables or animal products across the border. They do not want to risk ruining their precious wine. Ha. Fun fact. And the coyam wine is a hybrid wine that is a combination of 4 or 5 different wine flavors, which I think is super cool!

Our final vineyard visit was at Bodegas RE! They are a much smaller vineyard and only produce about 45,000 bottles a year. They do a lot of their fermenting in clay pots instead of barrels, which I thought was super cool! We got to look inside one at some of the grapes. They are kind of bringing back an older style of wine making, and that is where the RE in their name comes from. It stands for renacimiento, which is like rebirth. 

Here are the wines we had there! Pinotel, which was a mix between Pinot Grigio and Moscatel, and Vigno. They were both super good as well. I did not have one wine I did not like throughout the entire day!

I really enjoyed the wine tour and was so glad we got to experience that during our time in Chile! There are over 30 different vineyards just in the Casablanca valley, so we only cracked the surface of all the options here. I am definitely going to miss the amazing Chilean wine when I come back to the states.