Today we sip some Chilean wine. So we travel with Gonzalo to the wine country. Our first stop is Matetic Vineyards in the San Antonio Valley.
We had a very nice private tour. Matetic is an organic and biodynamic winery. So you ask “what is a biodynamic winery”?? Let’s see if I understand it correctly…
It’s the philosophy that all living things must be connected together for a successful farming operation. So the animals must help to make the crops grow–they graze on the grass in the vineyard and leave manure for fertilizer. The poultry keep down the bug population. Composting is a key component. Even the cycles of the moon determine planting timing.
Matetic is also experimenting with wine aging. They have a cement egg-shaped chamber that is aging a small batch of wine. There is no external control of the temperature and no added flavors except the wine flavors (no oak, etc). The location and form of the buildings are also important. The winery buildings are partially buried into the hillside and other aspects of the winery’s architecture also contribute to the biodynamic aspect of the property. The property is really beautiful.
Enough of the methods; let’s get to the results! Our guide took us to a beautiful tasting room to taste their higher-end wine called EQ (Coralillo is their lower priced label).
The Sauvingon Blanc was great. That varietal is grown a lot in the valley. The real surprise was the Chardonnay. I’m only a fan of French Chardonnays but this was made in the French style and was perfect. We also tasted their Pinot Noir and Syrah (we had a farm-made aged Mancheco cheese with the Syrah), both fabulous wines. The price, however, was not fabulous: $25 to $45. We tasted the Coralillo Syrah, which was about $15 less expensive than the EQ Syrah and it was quite good. But still it is a $30 Chilean bottle of wine.
After the tour we had Gonzalo join us for lunch at the winery. Although he resisted a bit because he thought it was too expensive we convinced him to join us. We had a great meal: Carrot soup for Gonzalo and a very nice ceviche for us. The ceviche was not as tart as we are used to and it had a nice faint taste of soy sauce. Gonzalo and H had braised beef and I had very nice local fish.
We were supposed to take a tour at another winery but we would have had to wait 45 minutes so we decided to head home. We would have an early pick-up for our plane trip to Balmaceda.
A few last thoughts on Santiago… There are just too many people in Santiago!! The traffic is horrific. There are not really many exciting sites to see in the city. The restaurants are only in one tourist area. So we’re glad we saw Santiago but would not go back.