I considered visiting Chile but I did not include it in my itinerary because there is a limit to how much time, interest, energy and money one has for a year of traveling around the world. My plan was to spend more time in Buenos Aires and take a short trip to Uruguai. However, Ricardo convinced me otherwise after our scuba diving trip to Abrolhos, so I met him in Santiago. The short of the following story is that I’m really glad I visited and I hope to have a chance to explore more of the beautiful country in the near future.

Ricardo arranged my stay at Carolina’s house with whom his 11 year old daughter Katalina lives. I learned the ins and outs of the house and they showed me to Katalina’s room which they prepared for me on the second floor. I was most grateful for their hospitality and comfortable accomodation and did not mind the pink colored flowers and dolls.

Ricardo invited me to his apartment for ‘Once’, Chilean custom of conversing over light food and drink prior to bed. He lives there with his wife, Karen and her daughter, Amanda. Karen is 14 months pregnant. She and my sister ‘debian estar en la misma fiesta’ because I learned from watching a recorded news clip from Abigail that she is going to be a big sister! Congratulations Marie and Ford, looking forward to welcome the new bundle of joy in January.

Abigail´s news: http://youtu.be/o81JfBm1zvA

I planned on skiing with the Fonsecas, but I felt ill, so I spent the day resting and exploring the area around the house, which included a tour of La Vina Cousino Macul. A German couple and a Mexican couple were also on the tour. Maybe I could act as translator between Spanish and German for a free case of wine! No such luck as our guide gave the tour in English, the common language for which everyone could understand. Cousino Macul is one of Chile’s longest producing vineyards, founded in 1856 by don Matias Cousino, who was a significant political and economic figure in Chile’s industrialization.

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Its iconic Lota wine is made from the finest hand selected grapes, grown on 80 year old vines that thrive in the mineral rich soils of this Andean valley. What sets these vines apart from others, is their output of only 6-7 clusters, rather than the average 12-13, which results in a densely concentrated grape. Our guide showed us younger vines, from which different varietals of grapes are harvested for production of their other wines, including Chile’s own Carmenere. He explained that most of the vines are now grown on their newly acquired land further south because with Santiago’s growth and rise in cost of land, they’ve had to sell off hundreds of acres.

He then led us into the fermentation warehouse where we walked in a tunnel of 5 meter tall barrels with a capacity to hold 60,000 liters. These were used up until 1994, when the winery had to make the transition to stainless steel tanks in order to remain competetive in the market. Now they are merely preserved and left on display as a memory to traditional methods. The modern stainless steel tanks are computer-monitered 24/7 and speed the fermentation process for the transfer of the wine into french oak barrels to be aged for 3 years when the wine is bottled and aged for another 3 years. Thus my purchase of a 2008 bottle of Lota, the baby I’vel been taking care of until I return to Houston.

large barrels: http://youtu.be/uoq91tTZgSs

We decend a set of doungeness stairs, dimly illuminated by the flicker of candles. The cellar stays at a cool 12 C, insulated by thick stone walls. It serves as a solid foundation for the warehouse above. The warehouse was constructed using egg shells mixed in the cement to bond Pennsylvania bricks and California Red Wood beam supports. It has withstood earthquakes measuring up up to 8.8 on the Richter Scale.

Below in the cellar are hundreds of Gran Reserve bottles collected in the winery’s ‘Biblioteca’. Reading the labels of the wines is a chronicle of the vineyard’s history. We would not get a chance to taste any of these wines but we were given a glass to try a 2013 white wine Gris Cabernet Sauvignon, 2013 Reserva Don Matias Carmenere, and a 2011 heavy bodied Antigua Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon.