Dec. 14th Livin´ la vina loca!

The 14th is jump started by the best breakfast we´ve had in Chile, as our hotel features a breakfast buffet with tons of fresh fruit and 5 kinds of freshly squeezed fruit juice in addition to the usual fare. With our vitamin C dose secured for the next week, we run errands (drop off laundry, get all our memory card burned to CD for posting to the blog, etc.) before our first tasting/tour at the Santa Cruz winery.

Santa Cruz had the best non-wine related aspects to their tour, including a aerial tram to a nearby hill overlooking the valley, and had reconstructed grass and sod houses of the indigenous peoples of Chile full of original artifacts.






They even had an astrolabe, complete with a sweet working telescope and various meteorites and old-school Soviet cosmonaut gear. Additionally, we were treated to a tour of the inner workings of the production side, and by now we realized that wine tours in Chile were much different beasts then in California, were you simply saddle up to the wine trough. The wine itself was tasty, with their Camenere taking first place in our informal poll.


In between wineries, we stop off at an extremely charming cafe at a nearby villa that had been recommended to us by our tour guide. The manager/owner spoke no English, and there was no menu, but despite that we had perhaps our best lunch of the trip with cheese empanadas to start followed by delicious pork ribs for the boys and a huge avocado salad for the ladies.

With our bellies full (perhaps too full), we make our way to Vina Bisquertt, makers of the delicious brand of La Joya wine (which is fairly accessible in the U.S., look for it if you have the chance. We had been on the lookout for La Joya, as we had a couple of bottles in Portland over the past couple of months via our friend Andy, who is a wine aficionado, but until we got to Bisquertt we had no idea they were one and the same. We again we treated to the full tour, including the various historical artifacts of the wineries owner, an accomplished gentlemen with 26 grandkids and many, many, awards adorning his walls. We had elected to take the "fancy-pants" tour (not their description) so we were treated to samples of the $60 ¨Zues" (a blend of 4 strains) and there reserve Malbec and reserve Savignon Blanc. They simply left us the bottles, and we managed to entertain ourselves for a while.



After freshening up at the hotel, we headed down to the hotels´s restaurant for dinner. The boys finally had their first steak of the trip (in a lovely red wine reduction), and the girls enjoyed fresh pasta with onions and olives. We decide to have an early night for a change, and retire to our respective rooms for some much needed rest.