2017.01.20 Valparaiso (Santiago), Chile

The port of Valparaiso is a steep amphitheater remarkable for its brightly colored residences and church steeples that UNESCO has declared its historic quarter a World Heritage Site. You can ride one of the city’s many funiculars to take in the views over the town and sea. However, this is also wine country.

We booked a private tour of four vineyards with another couple from Canada (Deana and Jim).  He was a Justice of the Peace in Canada and they are fantastic people. We have done a lot with this couple and two couples from Australia.

The tour picked us up at the ship and we drove through the outskirts of Valparaiso to get to our first winery. Our guide was Rodrigo and was excellent. The climate here is very dry, but at night there is a lot of due or low clouds which provide water for the grapes. However, the next morning, if the clouds are still around, the plants will absorb to much moisture, so they have windmills in among the grape vines to blow off the water.

The first winery we visited was Emiliana Organic Vineyards. Our guide here was Ramon.

Emiliana is the leading Organic Vineyard in Chile and one of the biggest in the World. It is a very biodiverse winery. There are chickens and guinea hens all around to eat the parasites that would otherwise eat the grapes. The coops for the chicken are on wheels so that they can be moved to where they are needed at the time.

They have alpacas and cows that they use the manure from to produce their compost for the plants. Like many wineries they plant roses at the end of each row as an early warning system for bugs. The bugs will go after the roses before the grapes. They do have drop irrigation, but it is not on the ground as if it was the rabbits would eat holes in it.

And then there was the wine tasting.

Our next winery was Bodegas RE. This was a boutinque winery with the majority of their wines being blends. They are also the only winery in the world that ages some of their wine in clay vessels. They export most of their wine, as Chileans do not drink that much wine, they drink Picoe (similar to a brandy, but made from grapes). We enjoyed the first winery much better, and the wine at the first was more to our tastes.

The next winery we visited, Viña Mar Winery, was just for lunch at their Restaurant Macerado. The owner of this winery owns 60% of the alcohol production in Chile; that includes wine and distilled alcohol. It was a very lavish place and had a very nice table on the veranda for lunch. The food was excellent, though our service was not. They did not have any robust reds, so I joined the guys and had a beer for lunch.

This was the end of what we had contracted for, but wanted to see one more winery. Rodrigo took us to Bodejas Re Vineyards. This along with the first one was great. There is a wine that is produced here and in France called Carmenere, an excellent red. It was in France for a long time, but got lost somewhere along the line. A Frenchman came to Chile and accidently found the grape and took it back to France and found it was the Carmenere grape. This was in the early 90’s and they have been making it since. Because of this it is still a young red wine. Very good.

Then we took a short tour of Vina del Mar, an upscale suburb of Valparaiso. Because of the recession caused by the Panama Canal in the 60’s many people moved from Santiago to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, with the more wealthiest living in the later. It is a beautiful city with a gorgeous beach and lots of restaurants and bars. If we had an extra day here, we would have come back and spent the day.

We got back to ship about 7 PM, the ship was not leaving till 11 PM. The days are getting much longer now that we are farther south. When we get down to Antarctica we will have almost 11 hours of daylight. This was also a working dock and we were parked next to the Chilean Navy.

I am writing this on Saturday and wanted to tell you that we woke up to very high seas this morning. That is the first time on this trip that we have not had calm water. In fact, they closed the Promenade so we could not walk. As the day goes on they are getting calmer. We are heading west to Robinson Crusoe Island.