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Location: Portillo, CHL
Eventually, the roads were cleared and the military received permission to transport us via bus down the switchbacks to the vineyard. A few trucks were still stranded. By the time we reached the bottom of the regulated part of the road – what we’ll call the mountain section, guarded with a gatehouse at the bottom – we noticed that the road was actually still closed for the most part. Besides us, only a few passenger cars and vans from Hotel Portillo were on the road. Truck after truck after truck was waiting to get moving and deliver their goods to Argentina. The truckers eyed us with envy as we passed, this gigantic bus. I think the military uniform of our driver convinced them to limit their envy to their eyes.
Because we got going so much later than we had planned, we had to cut out the Chilean-style bar-b-que and rush straight to the vineyard. I’ve taken to Chilean wines lately. After nearly four years of strict sobriety, I started tasting red wines earlier this summer at the recommendation of a doctor – for health benefits! So I was excited to try their wines out at the source!
We arrived at Vina San Esteban. The sky was cloudy and the vineyard was lacking the foliage and grapes I had imagined. Yeah, I forgot that it was still winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Our group took a tour of the facilities the winery uses to create its wines. Our guide described how microclimates affect which variety of grape is grown in which part of their land as well as the production process, from harvesting and fermentation to aging and bottling.
I was most interested to learn more about the history of Carmenere, what I had heard was a grape variety indigenous to Chile. Our guide told us that most wine varietals are descendants of grapes indigenous to Europe, and that Carmenere is no different. In the nineteenth century, a plague wreaked havoc on French vineyards, destroying most of the European wine industry. Replanting Carmenere proved impossible and the vinos presumed that Carmenere had become extinct.
In the 1990s, a scientist, curious about the unique properties of Chilean-produced Merlot, found that the varietal Chilean winemakers thought was Merlot was in fact the great Carmenere. When Chile imported vines in the nineteenth century to start its wine industry, Carmenere had been imported along with the Merlot. Due to its isolation, thousands of miles from France, with the impenetrable Andes to the east and the vast Pacific Ocean to the west, the disease never contaminated the original stock brought to Chile.
Carmenere is by far my favorite wine. Similar to Cabernet Sauvignon, which by default was my favorite variety because our family’s boat was named Cabernet, it is distinguished by a much more complex taste. One vineyard claims that it tastes of “chocolate, coffee, and spice, [which] combine with raspberries and blackberries.” I don’t put much stock in wine descriptions. But I can taste the different between Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenere!
Oh, and we found out that white wines aren’t necessarily from green grapes. Red wines are the product of fermenting the juice and the crushed skin of the grapes, whose tannins provide the wine its distinct red color. Fermenting just the juice of grapes produces white wines. Interesting, we also learned that winemakers add yeast to the casks to speed the fermentation process. The skin of grapes has some yeast, but apparently, it is not enough to produce the level of alcohol found in wine. Vine San Esteban ferments its red wines for about two weeks, and then transfers them to oak casks for further aging.
After tasting and buying different wines, we headed back to our home at the Chilean Mountain Warfare School to rest for the 25-km patrol race.
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