Chile

Chile was another beautiful South American country we visited, however we only got to see a small part of it... Santiago and the wine region around Santa Cruz.

We were definitely "wined out" after 5 days of tasting some of the best Chilean wines. Wine tasting in Chile is a little different to wine tasting in Australia. In Chile you need to book ahead of time and if you turn up at a vineyard without an appointment, they may say no to providing you with a tasting. They also give tours of the vineyard explaining their wine making process, and then provide a more formal wine tasting.

We visited a couple organic wineries as well as some bio-dynamics. Bio-dynamics use natural composting and some organic techniques, however they still use fertilisers and pesticides.

Santigo is a pretty city, quiet modern and the main reason for this is due to earthquakes destroying their older buildings. The countryside is beautiful and Santa Cruz is surrounded by mountains and coastline. Some places we could see the snowcapped mountains.

The food was amazingly delicious and so fresh. They have plenty of seafood due to having such a long coastline.

Some of the wineries had friendly dogs, one in particular had a saint bernard who got a bit excited about me being out of the car. He wanted to jump all over me and play... the back of him waged excitedly and he playfully growled at me. I had to get back in the car because he was going to bowl me over.

Another winery played a CD of monks chanting to their top of the line range of wines. It was a winery with spiritual philosophies. Their Marketing Director had been in a couple of really bad accidents where he experienced angels saving his life so in dedication, every one of their wine labels has an angel on it.

We would love to go back and explore more of Chile. To view our photos, visit our Chile album.