Dec. 13th - Onward to Wine Country!

We enjoy our final meal at the resort's restaurant, and we hit the road bound for Santa Cruz, were we have 3 days of wine tours and tastings on our itinerary. We attempt to stop at a couple of wineries on the back roads we take to I-5, but each sleepy winery says there are completely booked, which worries us about the fact we don´t technically have any tours booked in Santa Cruz yet.

After a few hours, we arrive in Santa Cruz, which is the hub of the Chochagua Valley, the finest wine producing region of Chile. This is also where the first wine tours originated in Chile, and Santa Cruz therefore has one of the better tourist infrastructure in Chile. We check into the Santa Cruz Plaza Hotel, which is an extremely beautiful hotel that was built by a former arms dealer who converted his holdings into legitimate businesses. We are told that they only have 1 room, so we turn Betsy loose on them and after 30 minutes or so we get a master suite for the same price.



While she is working her magic, the rest of us step into their wine booking operation and quickly realize that the Santa Cruz Plaza Hotel has some clout as we book three days of touring within 15 minutes.







After settling into our rooms, we had off of our first tour at Viu Manent winery, a charming vineyard that turned out to be everyone´s favorite overall.




Our tour guide was extremely nice (a welcome trend that we noticed at each vineyard), and treated us to an tour through the vineyards via horse and buggy.

This was followed by a walking tour of the production side were we allowed to sample the 2005 Cabernet straight from the massive steel holding keg.


We then sample 6 kinds of their wine, including Camenere, a variety that was thought to have to disappeared from the world until it was discovered in Chile some years back. Very tasty, indeed, but we love their Cabernet and their Malbec, which was voted the best Malbec in Chile in 2005.

After the tour we head back to the hotel to freshen up, and decide to hit the recommended sushi restaurant two doors down. We (not surprisingly, perhaps) have the place to ourselves and gorge ourselves on delicious sushi and tempera, featuring the thinest slices of avocado any of us have ever seen wrapped around the outside of the roll.

We head back to the suite for cards and wine (after Betsy and Carrie finally get Betsy´s ponytail the same color as the rest of her head). We decide to teach Betsy and Rich the game of Hearts, and Rich proceeds to get stuck with the Queen of Spades 4 of the first 5 hands we play, which pretty much ensures that he will never play the game of Hearts again. Nevertheless, a good time is had by the rest of us, and we retire to bed to rest up for the big day of wine tasting ahead of us.