Whenever we travel we always love to hit the wine regions. We find the best way to understand a region is to visit the winemakers and listen to their story, the smaller operators the better. This way we learn and remember details like terroir and grape variety. So when we decided to travel to Chile we knew we would be hitting up a wine region.
Colchagua was mostly picked because it was not too far from Santiago, but it was also known for excellent wines.
We got a small apartment just outside of Santa Cruz, the biggest town in the valley. It was on a side valley and was just high enough to have a nice view over the valley. We arrived on New Years Eve in the afternoon after a long overnight flight from Amsterdam. So we got some groceries and some local bubbly to celebrate the New Years. I would like to say we rallied and toasted at midnight, but we both fell asleep at 10:30 after 1 glass.
On New Years day we drove around to a few wineries and were not surprised that they were closed for the day. So we toured around with the car, having our first rough experience ordering food in Spanish at the only restaurant we found open that day. And retired early in the afternoon to continue our rest.
Our first winery was Viña Montes, we arrived to the beautiful estate and were able to join an English tour immediately. The tour took us through the vineyards, wine making facilities and barrel room and then we tasted 4 of their wines in their tasting room overlooking the estate. The wines were delicious, our favorite was the Syrah, but would have been happy with any of the 4 we tasted. I was particularly surprised by the full bodied Pinot Noir, which was quite different than I expect from Pinot Noir.
We toured the valley a bit more finding a nice tiny local place to have the lunch special. From there we headed to Viña Vu Manent. We had to wait a bit for the tour to start, but their inner courtyard with shade trees was a nice place to sit and read for a bit. The tour consisted of a short carriage ride through the vineyards to the wine making facilities, where we saw the the tanks and barrel room, including tasting a raw wine straight from one of the tanks. We rode the carriage back to the main estate for the tasting where we tasted 6 wines. The wines were again very good, I found one that I really didn’t like, but I appreciated the variety of the wines offered. We were on the tour with 2 retired couples from the US, they were on a short tour before heading to do a long trek in Patagonia. The conversation with them during the tour also added to the fun we had tasting the wines. We again bought a bottle of our favorite wine, this time a Cabernet Sauvignon.
The next day we arrived at Viña Santa Cruz around 11 to learn that the tour was quite expensive, around $45 per person. We decided to skip this one and instead have some of their wine with lunch. We had some poorly cooked steaks, and had failed to order accompaniments until the steak arrived. So it was a strange lunch, but the Cabernet Sauvignon we had was excellent, and the views from their restaurant were excellent. Having had 3 tastings in 2 days we decided a trip to the beach was a better alternative than further tastings, though there were 4-5 more wineries that came recommended to us. So that wrapped up our wine tasting part of the trip, 3 days would have been perfect if we could have spread out the tastings a third day.
Wine tours in the Colchagua valley were more of a tourist experience versus an intimate meeting with the wine maker. We were impressed with the knowledge of the staff and we were able to taste some excellent wines. But the average cost for each tasting was $20 with no discounts if you bought wine afterwards. So it was an experience I would recommend, it wasn’t as great as some experiences we had in other countries.
