Chilean Wine Tasting - The National Sport

The Casablanca area is full of wineries and is the destination of a lot of wine tours, which provides seasonal employment. For the rest of the year, although the scenery is great, the living isn't easy. The houses we are building are next to others that have a lot of problems, like walls of mud. You can see some of our building anyway, at Chile's Habitat for Humanity website, where some shots taken today at our build will be up soon. Like most of the schedule here, it isn't written in stone exactly when that will happen.

Sunday we were on vacation, and did some visits to the local industry.

Odd that after a few days of really hard work, it was R&R that did me in. Sunday we toured the wine country around Casablanca and tried six varieties of wine, though we had to hear three times about the process of winemaking to get the tasting part. Large scale winemaking is a little different from feralliberal's variety, with big vats and tons of oak barrels and really chilly basements. Also we saw a few good candidates for the prison Casques of Amontillada. It was good though. We saw lots of international awards, most of them for the 'Private Reserve' varieties of the different institutions. That was in the $50 a bottle range, and we were more interested in the $4 a bottle sorts.

The history I had told here from our local North TX wine background is part of the Chilean wine industry history as well. In the late 19th century an epidemic of phyloxera, a rot in the vine, struck the vineyards throughout Europe, threatening to wipe out wine grapes altogether. In Denison, TX, an oenophile named T.V. Munson researched and discovered a resistant strain of wine stock that he shared with the flagging vineyards throughout the world, and saved wine growers all over the world. One variety that couldn't be saved was the Carmenere, and it had become extinct. The Chilean country which is so perfect for grapes had sheltered a few that were re-discovered in the 20th century, and grown for wine. Now Chile has a burgeoning Carmenere wine making trade that has brought it back to the world. Of course, the winemakers we visited Sunday were letting us have a taste of this revivified variety. It was a star. The Kid and I bought a bottle which we shared last night, and it was the best red wine we had from all our tasting.

Sorry, FeralL, they won't let us bring back a planting with us.

Casablanca being much better for white than red wine, there isn't a huge red wine trade here, but some is developing. Happily, I found several nice wines, but the Carmenere from Indomita vineyards was my favorite.

The locals here tell us that most of their tourism comes for the wine but doesn't stay here in Casablanca. It's an hour's drive to Santiago, shorter drive to Valpairaiso and Vina del Mar on the coast, so the tourist trade passes them by. Fortunately, Habitat for Humanity has become active here, and housing is improving for many of the residents.