Santiago - Day 2

Today was winery day.  I signed up through Uncorked, a wine tour company based in Santiago for an all day tour of 3 wineries in Casablanca Valley.  Located between Santiago and Valparaiso, this valley is one of the newer areas for wine growing.  The vinyards have only been around for about 25 years.  We visited Bodega Re, Loma Larga and Quintay.  All three are boutique wineries.  Bodega Re enjoys using older methods of producing wine - they ferment and age in clay barrels.  Loma Larga defies the white wine region by growing and producing some very delicious red wines - especially a coastal Malbec that tastes fantastic yet is very different from your typical Argentinian Malbecs.  I liked it so much I bought a bottle to take on the ship with me.  Quintay is where we enjoyed a phenomenal lunch - each course was paired with a different and delicious wine.  The Syrah was hands down the best wine of the day.

After three wineries and traipsing through vinyards a good part of the day, our small group was pretty mellow on the ride back to Santiago.  Most of us slumbered a little bit, lulled off to nap-land by the wine and the back and forth of the van on the highway into Santiago.  It was a pretty great day!

Here's some pictures I captured.

These 3 below are from the balsamic room.  Bodega Re makes an absolutely divine balsamic wine - we tasted it as a syrupy dip for our bread while we were tasting wines.  They also make sweet wines from it - my favorite was the plum, but our group seemed to prefer the pear the best.

The small barrels below are all made from different woods, so we got the opportunity to smell each wine - you can really tell the difference based on the barrel's wood.

These were the various fruits being fermented.

Clay "barrels" at Bodega Re.

How can I not be happy around wine barrels???  !!

 This was a very cool decanter.  Kind of reminds me of bongs from long ago.... although those didn't "decant" wine.....

Our group.  Don't we all look happy?  And this was just at winery #1!!!

My favorite wine of the day.

Great lunch!  This was course #3.  We started with a ceviche, followed by an amazing salmon and eggplant dish, followed by this beautiful braised in wine beef and potato dish.

And this was dessert..... yum!

Well, hey - let's take a little taste before bottling, shall we???

The grapes are so pretty.