A Chilean Wine Tour

Posted on April 25, 2019 by Janet

We spent 3 weeks of March cruising the valleys of Chile and Argentina drinking wine. A lot of wine. Mostly sipping and occasionally spitting, of course, as one does on a wine tasting tour, but always enjoying wine with dinner and often wine with lunch. And I discovered not only that these countries are producing a lot of excellent wines in the verdant valleys at the base of the Andes, but that ‘garden’ and ‘nature’ often intersect with ‘vineyard’ in a way the piqued my personal interest. This tour with Toronto’s Steve Thurlow, after all, was a bit of a balancing equation after 3 weeks touring gardens in New Zealand in 2018, aka “Janet’s tour”. Now we were celebrating Doug’s passion, wine-collecting, while escaping a slug of nasty Canadian winter in the southern hemisphere. So…. what did we see that might interest my blog readers? Have a look below. (And I promise to get back to the last few New Zealand gardens very soon.)

Approaching Chile – We flew overnight, a 10-1/2 hour flight from Toronto, and as dawn broke over the Andes as we neared Santiago, I looked down at the most unusual cloud formation over the Pacific Ocean. Later, as we listened to various winemakers talk about the effect of marine fog and the cold Humboldt Current on grape growing, I realized that what I had seen was not cloud, but a blanket of marine fog. The Humboldt Current originates in waters north of the Antarctic circle and flows along the coast of Chile to northern Peru. It is named for Alexander von Humboldt, the 19^th century Prussian naturalist who explored South America and recorded the temperatures of the current in his 1846 book Cosmos.

Santiago, Chile – We spent a few days in Chile’s capital and took a hop-on-hop-off bus to gain a fast understanding of this city. With a population of 7-million (2017 figures) across its 37 municipalities (conurbation) in a nation of 18-million people, it is the seventh largest city in Latin America. In the residential areas under San Cristobal hill, where I made the photo below after arriving in a cable car, it also has a lovely green canopy.

Although I saw a lot of Chilean wine palms on our trip, this view of Santiago is framed by a Canary Island date palm (Phoenix canariensis). With its central Chile location, Santiago has a semi-arid Mediterranean climate.

That night, I had my first pisco sour cocktail at the rooftop bar of the Magnolia Hotel, where we stayed. Here we see containers of society garlic (Tulbaghia violacea), which we would see used prolifically in many more Chilean gardens.

Veramonte, Casablanca Valley, Chile – After driving out of Santiago via a tunnel through the coastal mountains, we visited our first winery. In the gardens here, I saw old favourites, goldenrod (Solidago sp.) and Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia). Like many vineyards, Veramonte subscribes to sustainable practices and encourages an ecological balance, which includes gardens…..

….. and ponds for birds that eat insects, and often…..

….. the inclusion of native Chilean plants like romerillo (Baccharis linearis), which we saw along the highways.

The mountains are never far away from Chilean vineyards, and often grapes are grown on steep slopes of the foothills.

There were also the brown bracts of artichokes…..

…. and of course, lots of luscious grapes, like these bunches of Syrah. If you go to Chile in March, you hit the middle of harvest time (the equivalent of our September), which begins with Sauvignon Blanc and ends with Carmenere.

Concón, Chile – After our lunch at Veramonte, we drove to the seashore near Concón, where our hotel for the next 3 nights, the Radisson Blu Acqua Hotel, featured crashing waves right below our window…..

…..and an amazing living wall over the parking lot.

Casas del Bosque, Casablanca Valley, Chile – This vineyard, which we visited the following morning, featured a pretty garden…..

….and a shrub/small tree we would see a lot in Chile, crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica).

Like New Zealand, we saw our fair share of agapanthus too.

Viña Emiliana, Casablanca Valley, Chile – Our luncheon tasting was at this organic, biodynamic vineyard which featured some principles like planting and pruning according to the moon phases, using interplantings of nitrogen-enriching legumes, etc. They had water gardens…..

…. and baby alpacas! That pretty plant in the photo below is Mexican sage (Salvia leucantha); we would see a lot of that in Chile and Argentina, too.

I bought my only wine here, a really lovely Rosé which I served last weekend for Easter dinner. (Plus I loved the wrapping!)

Viña Casa Marin, San Antonio Valley, Chile – It was a thrill to visit this winery and meet Maria Luz Marin, aka Marilu, Chile’s first female oenologist. There I am in green raising a glass of a very nice Sauvignon Blanc.

Valparaiso, Chile – An evening visit to Valparaiso saw us touring part of this historic city on foot, and using the 1893 Artillería ascensor or funicular railway to negotiate one of the many hillsides.

Valparaiso was the main port of Latin America for goods from Europe until the construction of the Panama Canal, after which its fortunes declined. It is still a major port and we looked out on the view of the harbour…

…. which was very busy with containers being loaded.

Walking up and down city streets, the decline is still evident through the city, though it is now enjoying a renaissance as a cultural centre. It is also a UNESCO heritage site.

Sweet little gardens adorned brightly painted houses.

Street art is a big thing in parts of Valparaiso. I loved this staircase leading to one of the more famous mural lanes. It says Tu no puedes comprar al sol – “You cannot buy the sun.”

This painting “Young Girl’ by France’s Mr Papillon for Hostel Voyage is famous in street art circles.

And how about these little pop bottle windowboxes?

Viña Chocalán, San Antonia Valley, Chile – We enjoyed our morning tasting at the Malvilla vineyard of the Toro family winery Chocalán…

…..one of two vineyards owned by the Toros, who began 60 years ago as wine bottle producers.

We sipped whites and rosés in the shade of a grape-laden pergola…….

…. followed by a winery tour with Aida Toro, who encouraged us to taste the Sauvignon Blanc grapes. While ripe wine grapes usually taste sweet and delicious, it’s the complex development of tannins and other factors that separate the wine from the grape.

We had a second Chocalan tasting indoors, in a room with a wonderful view of the mountains.

We finished with a lovely lunch at a long family table out in the vineyards where we enjoyed a delicious barbecue and more wine.

Cono Sur Vineyards and Winery, Colchagua Valley, Chile – This big operation, owned by Concha Y Toro, was our first winery in the Colchagua Valley. It was a hit with our group, not just for the lovely 19^th century guest house that serves as the reception area…….

….. but for the bicycles they offered to let guests cycle out to the distant vineyards, just as the grape pickers still do today.

Two decades ago, Cono Sur (named for the ‘southern cone’ of Chile) switched to sustainable agriculture practices, featuring integrated vineyard management and carbon footprint reduction. They use sheep to curtail weeds and geese to eat a beetle that harms spring grapes. The geese are kept caged at night at night in spring against foxes and later in the season because they love the taste of ripe grapes.

Cono Sur also uses native species as companion plants to introduce an ecological balance to the vineyard, much like the natural hedgerows of British farm fields. Shown here are salvia roja (Salvia microphylla) and the Chilean pepper tree (Schinus molle). Nearby was sweet-scented lemon verbena (Aloysia virgata).

We were fortunate to see some of the manual and mechanical wine-sorting at Cono Sur during our visit. Leaves, rachis (the main bunch stem) and individual grape stems are composted outdoors over the Chilean winter and the compost is then used to feed the grapevines.

Here’s a look at some of the Cono Sur winery harvest action, and the tasting remarks of one of the winery’s winemakers, Carol Koch.

Yes, we tasted each one of these wines…..

…..followed by a delicious lunch featuring an unusual, beautiful and delicious avocado-frosted savoury torte.

Viña Ventisquero, Colchagua Valley, Chile – We were told to wear comfortable shoes for our late afternoon visit to this hillside winery……

….. and as I walked up the switchback dirt road in my sparkly flip-flops, I kicked myself for leaving the hiking shoes at the hotel.

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Note that many of the vines here are single staked, rather than trained laterally. This is common on steep hillsides.

Ventisquero means an exposed, windy place on the mountains and this lovely vineyard aerie gave us a spectacular view of the surrounding valley.

Thanks to tour member Kathy who captured me photographing the vineyard.

Our evening ended with a stunning sunset.

Viña MontGras, Colchagua Valley, Chile – This winery stop was such fun because their own guide, Marcelo, was a born entertainer. He quizzed us constantly.

Out in the vineyard, he taught us the shapes of the various varietal leaves.

In the winery, he gave us a ‘tasting’ quiz (including ungainly photo of the blogger, below) and asked us to guess. It was easy: ‘Sauvignon Blanc’.

Chile suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010. (In fact, Chile is the site of the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, the May 22, 1960 Valdivia 9.5 M_wearthquake, which left 2 million people homeless.) At our lunch after our tasting in the courtyard, our attention was drawn to the earthquake-mitigating beam joints in MontGras’s building construction.

Viña Montes, Colchagua Valley, Chile – Our last visit in the Colchagua Valley was to Aurelio Montes’s elegant winery.

We walked across a large ornamental pool that is used to circulate water in the winery, including a fountain in the reception area, according to Feng Shui principles.

And if you like that, you might enjoy listening to the Gregorian Chant that Montes plays constaly for the wines aging in the barrel rooms.

Montes features a multi-floor gravity flow for its winemaking, eliminating the need for pumps. You can see the orange-wrapped chutes leading to the fermentation tanks in their modern facility. Following our tour, we were bused up the hillside to an al fresco barbecue dinner.

Viña Santa Ema, Maipo Valley, Chile – Architecture was front and centre at this family vineyard…..

….. where our wine tasting included some very nice nibbles before a lunch.

Casa Real Hotel – Santa Rita, Maipo Valley, Chile – By the time we got to this venerable old hotel owned by Santa Rita wines – including its historic, 40-hectare estate garden – I was a bit wiped out. Given that we were spending two nights at this luxurious 16-room hotel, and this was our guest room….

…. including a delightful sitting room, I decided to play hooky from the next day’s tour stop, Santa Carolina wines and just hang out and investigate the property.

This is the front of the hotel, and though it was almost out of bloom, the bougainvillea draped over the cypress is reputed to be the biggest in Chile. Viña Santa Rita was founded in 1880 by the businessman Don Domingo Fernández Concha. As well as establishing his adjacent vineyards, he hired the German architect Teodoro Burchard to design this building, his summer home….

….as well as the adjoining neo-Gothic chapel….

…. especially for his daughter’s wedding.

I loved this loggia.

We toured the estate before and after our wine tasting – the smell of jasmine was intoxicating.

The garden was designed for Don Domingo Fernández Concha in 1882-85 by the French-born landscape designer Guillermo Renner (1843-1924), who was also the Director of Gardens of Santiago and the Municipal Plant Breeder and is considered to be the “father of landscaping in Chile”. It mixes elements of Italian, French and English styles.

In a spacious pond, we found a pair of black-necked songs who seemed to be singing plaintively for their supper.

Amidst the abundant orchards and citrus groves…..

…. and arboretum-like plantings of trees from around the world, like these ghost gums (Eucalyptus)….

….. was a very modern swimming pool.

A surprising feature of the Casa Real estate was a beautiful, modern museum, Musee Andino, featuring an amazing collection of pre-Columbian artifacts…

…. including pottery, textiles, sculpture, tools and a roomful of gold antiquities.

On my walk outside the estate, I looked longingly beyond a fence onto a nearby hillside where the native flora included the Chilean cactus Echinopsis chilensis. That splash of scarlet on the side of some of the cacti is not flowers but a parasitic cactus mistletoe (Tristerix aphylla). Oh how I would have loved to climb that hill!

Viña Perez Cruz, Maipo Valley, Chile – With the Casa Real as our base, we visited this nearby winery/almond plantation with the most spectacular architecture, designed by José Cruz Ovalle, who used curved laminated wood to create optimal air movement within the building….

…. and built Inca-inspired pirca stone walls everywhere!

Viña Errázuriz, Aconcagua Valley, Chile – My favourite winery was also our last one in Chile. Beautiful Errázuriz took the honours for landscape design with dramatic entrance gardens and reflecting pools leading to the original 1870 bodega and winery constructed by founder Don Maximiano Errázuriz over 15 years. The Errázuriz name is very familiar to Chileans, since four men in the family ultimately became president of the nation. The terraced hillside of the Aconcagua Valley behind is actually the base of one of the foothills of the Andes, which we would cross the next morning.

Scalloped garden beds flanked the vineyards and drew the eye towards the modern Don Maximiano Iconic Winery, built in 2010 and designed to look like a ship sailing through a sea of vines.

I loved the way the line of reflecting pools seems to extend up into the linear grape plantings. Bubblers come on intermittently to keep these pools clear.

We saw South African native society garlic (Tulbaghia violacea) in many gardens in Chile.

Designed by architect Samuel Claro out of bleached concrete, the Don Maximiano Iconic Winery was built to bring Errazuriz wines into the 21^st century, using cutting edge winemaking technologies, environmental sustainability and solar and geothermal energy. It is used exclusively for Errazuriz’s high-end red labels.

Grasses and low shrubs frame the view of the vineyards from the entrance.

Inside, the process of fermentation and aging features gravity movement of fruit and liquids from the top floor to the tanks and barrels on the two floors below. All three floors can be seen in the image below.

For our Errazuriz wine-tasting, we moved to the old winery where bricks were mortared together almost a century-and-a-half ago with a mixture of egg whites and sand. The cellar rooms alone took 5 years to complete.

Casks in the old cellar are made of raulí beech (Nothofagus alpina), a native Chilean tree.

After the tasting, we moved to the outdoor restaurant where we were treated to delicious appetizers….

….. and a lovely lunch.

It seemed like a fitting place to say goodbye to Chile with a vacation snapshot of Doug and me. (And this is officially my longest blog ever…..)

Next up on the tour: Through the Andes into Argentina.

Queenstown – Bungy-Jumping & Botanizing

Posted on March 8, 2018 by Janet

As the crow (or Air New Zealand) flies, it’s approximately 1024 kilometres (636 miles) from Auckland on the North Island to Queenstown on the South Island, most of it over the Tasman Sea. That was our route on our 7^th touring day with the American Horticultural Society’s Gardens, Wine & Wilderness Tour in January 2018.

Below on Google’s satellite view is the approximate route that AZ 615 takes inland from the Tasman Sea (which also separates Australia and New Zealand), bearing southeast over the Southern Alps towards Queenstown.

Gate to gate, the flight takes about 1 hour and 50 minutes (80 minutes or so of flying time) and the last 15 minutes of flying over the lake, through the valley in which Queenstown sits and up its Frankton Arm to the airport make it among the most beautiful air approaches on the planet. In fact in 2015 respondents named Queenstown as the “most scenic airport approach” in a survey of that category.

So….. given that we had perfect weather on the flight, that I had the almost perfect seat overlooking the left engine cowling, and that I was enjoying trying out my new Samsung S8 phone, indulge me for a few photos while we approach Queenstown together. (If you make it to the end, there’s a little….’surprise’.) The route took us over the Southern Alps, the South Island’s long backbone, which stretches for 500 kilometres from Fiordland in the southwest to Nelson Lake National Park in the northeast. Here we are looking north toward Mount Aspiring National Park. North of the park and not visible in the photo is mighty Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak at 3724 metres (12,218 ft), where we would be in a few days.

Within seconds, below, the northernmost arm of the dogleg-shaped (Z-shaped) Lake Wakatipu was visible, with Pig Island a notable landmark. This beautiful finger lake is 80 kilometres (50 miles) long with a maximum depth of 380 metres (1280 feet). Though the mountains look barren here, that greenish-yellow in the scree and fellfields on the slopes features snow tussock meadows with myriad high alpine species.

In the photo below we are looking straight up Lake Wakatipu towards the town of Glenorchy at its head. The lake was carved out by glaciers more than 15,000 years ago, between mountains uplifted over millions of years by earthquakes along the Alpine Fault. (New Zealand is part of the seismically-active Ring of Fire in the Pacific Basin, as we know from recent devastating earthquakes in Christchurch and elsewhere). Here on the west side of the South Island, the mountains are made of greywacke, a sandstone-mudstone mix that rose tectonically with the mountains from sediment in a deep ocean trench on the boundary of the Gondwana supercontinent between 100-300 million years ago. (Before it broke off and floated away, New Zealand was on the edge of Gondwana, which also included South America, Africa, Australia, India, and Antarctic.) Because greywacke fractures and falls apart easily, mountain climbers in the Southern Alps nicknamed it ‘Weetbix’. On the east side of the South Island, the bedrock is mostly metamorphic schist. For a more comprehensive exploration of New Zealand geology, have a look at this excellent website.

Now we’re heading straight along the middle arm of the Z-shaped lake towards Queenstown.

A little fun fact about Lake Wakatipu. Its dogleg shape causes it to produce a tide-like phenomenon called a seiche, or standing wave, derived from a Swiss-French word that means “swaying back and forth”. The lake’s surface rises and falls roughly 10 cm (4 inches) on a 25-minute cycle, best observed apparently at Bob’s Cove (below) on the way into Queenstown. In Māori legend, the rhythmic surging was caused by the monster Matau dozing away at the bottom of the lake.

A few seconds later, we come to the fun part: Queenstown. Though it’s New Zealand’s winter sports centre with lots of mountain areas to ski,there is something for everyone in this alpine town 12 months a year. Here I’ve labelled a few of the things we did over the next few days. Yes, we visited the Queenstown Garden and then travelled up the gondola in order to botanize on the flank of Ben Lomond from which we saw those ‘ghost pines’ in the far left!

And this, a second or so later….Yes, my husband Doug played golf at the Queenstown Golf Course, below (thank goodness for extra-curricular activities for non-gardening spouses!) Now we’re flying down the Frankton Arm of Lake Wakatipu towards the airport suburb of, yes, Frankton.

You must be thinking we’re going to land any moment now, right? Well, that’s what we thought as we roared towards the runway………

…. but NO! Captain didn’t like those tricky Queenstown winds. So up we went for a fly-around. Of course, no one would rather ‘take a chance’ on a landing, so thank you Captain AZ615 for keeping things safe. Now we see the Lower Shotover River behind the airport as we ascend again. Fun!

I’m not quite sure where we went…. Remarkables? (There are so many mountains around Queenstown). Anyway, we rounded a craggy, brown peak……

….. and flew over Lake Hayes, below. (At this point, I should give a nod to Google Earth, which helped me identify many of the Queenstown area landmarks.)

Finally, with that first small adventure under our belt, we landed at the airport in Queenstown – adventure capital of New Zealand!

Wine-Tasting Adventure!

Alan, our lovely bus driver from the North Island was at the airport to meet us and off we drove along the Kawauru River towards Cromwell. This narrow gorge of the river is called Roaring Meg; it contains a dam and two small power stations that form the Roaring Meg Power Scheme, built in 1934. Hydro-electric power provides almost 60% of New Zealand’s electricity.

I couldn’t resist this bus window view of the local greywacke rock with its “Weetbix” composition.

Before long we arrived at Goldfields where we were scheduled to have a wine tasting and lunch. But the place is more than that; it offers tourists a chance to pan for gold like the prospectors who arrived by the thousands in the 1860s for the Central Otago Gold Rush.

Or you could pay to sit in a jet boat and roar up the Kawauru Gorge. (No thanks…)

Instead we elected to head to our reserved table at Wild Earth Wines…….

…. to enjoy a wine tasting……

….. and have a lunch that reminded us all that New Zealand is home to vibrant sheep and cattle farming industries as well as a rich fishery!

After lunch, we had a date with one of New Zealand’s iconic adventure tourism spots. Along the route, we passed a small vineyard and learned that this is the most southerly of New Zealand’s wine-growing regions.

NOT Bungy-Jumping Adventure!

Soon we arrived at the Kawarau Bridge Bungy Centre, which is the original site for New Zealand bungy-jumping. It was here in 1989 that Kiwi pals A.J. Hackett and Henry Van Asch first launched their plans for a commercial bungy-jumping enterprise mimicking the “land jumpers” of Vanautu. Check out this video at 2:35 of their big p.r. stunt in Paris, bungy-jumping from the Eiffel Tower, followed by a quick arrest. One of the serious medical risks of doing this is retinal detachment – and since I suffered one of those without even jumping off my kitchen table a few decades back, I restricted myself to photographing the lovely young woman below, who would have paid $205 ($175 NZ student) for the privilege of doing this……

…… and videotaping a man doing a water dunk as he enjoyed his bungy-jump, with a little valley wind in the background. (My 4- and 2-year old grandkids LOVE this video.!)

We watched as river rafts waited for the jumpers to clear the platform. A few in our group chose to do some rafting the next day – but we were planning to look for plants!

Janet Blair Garden

Then we made our way towards Queenstown via the lovely garden of Janet Blair.

Our American Horticultural Society guide Richard Lyon of Garden Adventures, Ltd. enjoyed his chat with our hostess, Janet. Richard, a Pennsylvania-based landscape architect has friendships with a long roster of creative gardeners who generously open their gardens to him on his annual winter tours to his home country.

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Look at this heart-shaped hedge window…..

….. and this beautiful arch into a garden room.

New Zealand experienced record heat in our first week of touring, echoing the dry summer they had before our arrival. This shady dell offered welcome relief.

Pretty combinations abounded in Janet’s garden, like this lavatera with lavender that…..

….. mirrors the hues of the Remarkables mountain range in the background, below. It was now time to head to our hotel in Queenstown for the night.

Queenstown Public Garden Advenure!

A free day in Queenstown! Along with a few plant geeks in the group, I visited the Queenstown Garden where our AHS host Panayoti Kelaidis, outreach director at Denver Botanic Gardens…..

…..toured us through the collections, which came from all over the world.

Apart from native New Zealand plants like lacebark ( Hoheria populnea)……

….. and wire netting bush (Corokia cotoneaster)….

……. I found some beautiful Romneya coulteri from California being visited by honey bees…..

….. and giant California redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum) with massive trunks….

…..and towering Douglas firs (Pseudotsuga menziesii). Seeing them here, clearly thriving after many decades, it would be shocking later that day to see the way they’ve invaded the mountains and valleys surrounding Queenstown – including those in the background of the photo – where the flanks are dark green with these Pacific Northwest natives.

Botanizing on Ben Lomond Adventure!

Soon after lunch, a few of us convened at the hotel and shared a cab to the Skyline Gondola Station at the base of Ben Lomond or Te-taumata-oHakitekura. It was a popular place with mountain-bikers and everyday folks like us.

Going up, the view of Queenstown Bay and Lake Wakatipu was spectacular. You can see right here the ‘wilding pines’ – a generic name for many non-native trees like these Douglas firs that were planted by European colonists in the late 1800s as a beautification project. Subsequent plantings took place as Arbor Day activities.

After getting off at the top where the view is even more stunning…..

….. we began our ‘tramp’ (as the Kiwis call a hike) by walking up through a dark Douglas fir forest. Notice that there are no understory plants here. Nada.

Soon we were on a path curving gently up through the Ben Lomond Scenic Reserve. We would be stopping well short of the upper saddle and summit (1748 m – 5735 ft), but it was still a good walk. And the botanizing was great!

I saw my very first mountain beech (Fuscospora cliffortioides).

The view over the subalpine shrubland was stunning…..

…..if you discounted the sprayed ghost forest of Douglas firs across the valley and the young trees popping up in the tussock grasses.

They are taking ‘control’ of these invasive conifers very seriously, as evidence by the sign here. And coming down on the path as we were ascending was one of the wilding eradication volunteers, clippers stuffed in his backpack.

But the plants! We saw turf mat daisy (Raoulia subsericea)…

….. and turpentine bush (Dracophyllum uniflorum), so called because of its eagerness to burn…..

….. and mountain cottonwood (Ozothamnus vauvilliersii)…..

….. and a very cool lycopod, Lycopodium fastigiatum.

That’s snow totara (Podocarpus nivalis) with the red berries, below. Not sure about the prostrate plant.

Panayoti had his reference book of New Zealand alpines with him, but he is a natural font of botanical knowledge and pointed out the tiniest plants to us as we trekked up the path. On the way we were passed by lots of young hikers heading up to the summit or coming down. From here, it was another 1-1/2 hours to the top. Ah to be young again, with fresh knees……

We had decided that the beech forest would be our turnaround point, and we finally got there. What a day it had been. Sitting in the shade under the beech trees…..

…… we realized we were tired, hot and thirsty. Time to start the hike down the mountain and back to the hotel — with a timely stop at a Queenstown pub en route. No gin-and-tonic ever tasted quite as delicious as the one I polished off with my fellow ‘trampers’.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: tasting

A Chilean Wine Tour

Queenstown – Bungy-Jumping & Botanizing

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