From Valparaiso, once the most important harbor in Chile, the road to the wine country took us through hills and valleys, mountains and cultivated plains. Unlike previous visits to wineries, this time we happened upon the harvest season and ripe grapes were hanging from the vines! We made an impromptu stop at Emiliana, an organic vineyard in Casablanca valley for a brief afternoon tasting before reaching the Hotel Almacruz in Santa Cruz, a town in the middle of the Chalpagua valley, the most important grape growing region of Chile.
The hotel’s deceptively plain façade on the town square hid a tropical resort complex; rooms in the main building and individual cabanas were spacious with real queen beds and air conditioning. The interior space offered a relaxing pool, a thatch roofed palapa with bar service and gift shops. The building, though new, had a warm colonial Spanish décor and a comfortable dining room with an ambitious menu that fell short in execution. The hotel faced the town square, where the residents took their evening strolls.
Our first stop was the small Neyen vineyard, one of the oldest in the area. Our guide, a petite teacher who conducts wine tours during the summer school break, told us about the process of growing and propagating vines. This vineyard believes in stainless steel fermentation containers. Neyen’s owner is in his 80s and the winery has been sold to the large Veramonte consortium but no change may be noticed for a while because they keep the wine for five years before bottling.
L’Apostolle is a much larger enterprise owned by the Laffitte family but we visited one of their small wineries where higher grade wines are prepared. We were lucky to be there during harvest. The grapes are handpicked and then put in white plastic cartons and brought to the processing room. A team of silent local women with blue aprons and plastic gloves were sorting the grapes. We were told several times that this was specifically “women’s work” because men have neither the hands nor the patience to do it. The grapes were then dropped onto a conveyor belt for a final round of hand-sorting and sprayed with liquid nitrogen before being tossed into a large steel barrel on wheels and dropped into the wood fermentation barrels through a bottom chute. We visited the cavernous cellars, several stories deep inside solid rock where the casks are allowed to age impervious to the conditions of the ground above.
We had lunch on a beautiful terrace with a grape arbor at Viu Manent. (We passed on the wine, pacing ourselves for the day.) One dish was conger… we are still trying to figure out whether this is conger eel or a fish of some sort. Delicate white flesh something like monkfish or perhaps halibut. It must be conger eel since Neruda has written an ode to conger eel soup.
The third visit was to the Laura Hartwig vineyard; it was the smallest and least commercial outfit. The lady of the land loves horses and had a semblance of polo grounds on site. Our guide talked mostly about the process of bottling and showed us labels prepared for sales to Russia and other unexpected countries. (Laura’s visage graces the label.)
On our last day, we visited the Maipo valley location of Conche Y Toro, one of the largest wineries of the country. This is the oldest site for the company established in 1883 by don Melchor, the dynasty patriarch, and in continuous production since. No handpicked grapes here; everything mechanized and efficient except for the priciest reserves. In a small demonstration area different types of grapes were grown next to each other identified with a plaque bearing the name of the variety. We will search for these wines when we get home. A bottle of wine always tastes better when you have seen where it started out.
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