Michael's Visit to Chile!

Michael popped down to Chile last week for a visit! I had a fantastic time showing him around to my favorite viewpoints, restaurants, and bars, as well as forcing him to try every basic Chilean food and drink that I could. (I documented all of these things and split them into three segments to avoid a 13 minute video. Each of them can be found on my Vlogs page.)

Most of our activities were things that I’d done previously and enjoyed, but we did do a few things that I hadn’t yet gotten a chance to do, including a boat tour of Puerto Valparaíso and finally going to Chile’s nearby wine region!

Casablanca
This was a daunting and uncertain trip from the start, despite being only 40 minutes outside of Viña. It seemed, from anything that I’d read online, that Casablanca is a very difficult to navigate, which we found to be true. We also read a lot about having to make reservations for a tasting and having to do a tour with each one (false). I gathered as much information online as possible and Michael and I headed to Viña’s bus terminal to start our wine day! …Just kidding, buses only go there from Valparaíso! (Which we were later told, by the winery, is not true.) We had already woken up a bit later than planned, so we decided to postpone until the following day.

We got up early the next morning to start our day and headed to the VALPO bus terminal and left on a bus within minutes. The weather had been spectacular and summery for the past four days, but today was unfortunately cold and overcast. We decided our plan of action was to start with reservations for a tour and tasting at the very recommended and popular Viña Indomita and feel things out from there. We were dropped off at Casablanca’s main square and had to get a taxi to our winery of choice, which was about a 15 minute ride. There are very few wineries next to one another, so to avoid a 40+ minute walk and the possibility of crossing a main highway, you basically have to have the winery call you another taxi to the next place.

At 12:00 we had our tour and tasting with Indomita, which lasted about an hour. This location is very different in the Casablanca Valley, as it is the only winery and vineyard place on a hill. We learned how this is a unique advantage, as the hill has a warmer climate than the valley below, allowing them to be the only winery in the region to grow red varieties. We then toured their facilities and learned about the winemaking process and ended with a (very small) tasting of three of their most popular wines. We asked our tour guide where she would recommend for lunch and she mentioned two winery restaurants (neither of which were her own winery’s restaurant). We decided to head to Viña Mar winery next door (one of those suggested for lunch), which was still a 20 minute walk through remote vineyards and included a run-in with a flock of wild turkeys.

We started with a quick tasting of four specialty wines (pictured above), which were surprisingly huge, and we were more or less already drunk by the end. We headed upstairs to their very lavish and expensive restaurant for a nice lunch and bottle of wine. We had planned to go to a third winery, but Michael wasn’t feeling well (😉), so we called a taxi back to the square and bussed home. It was a short, but excellent day in Chile’s Casablanca Valley.