MyWinePal

Chile is a fascinating country, with climate and terrain that vary from the Atacama desert in the north to glaciers in Patagonia to the south, and everything in between!  From Wikipedia I learned that by surface 80% of South America’s glaciers lie in Chile.  Then there are the Andes Mountains, which controls/modifies the weather coming in [...]

Did you know that Vina Carmen is Chile’s oldest winery, founded in 1850 by Christian Lanz, who named the winery after his wife, Carmen? The Carmenere grape variety was rediscovered at Carmen in 1994. In 1997 Carmen launched the first Chilean organic wine under the Nativa brand.  I remember buying the wine in WA state [...]

To complement my blog article about the “Northern Gem, Southern Icon” dinner with Concha y Toro at the Blue Water Cafe, I also recorded a video.  The video is an introduction to the winery, the wines we will be tasting, their iconic Cabernet Sauvignon wine “Don Melchor“, and an introduction to Chile’s signature red grape [...]

Last week the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival finished, and more work began for me.  Last week was about tasting the wines from Chile and from many other wineries around the world.  This week starts my writing my experiences in seminars and in the International Festival Tasting room. I made the following recommendations for Chilean [...]

In case you didn’t know, Chile is the Theme Country this year at the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival.  But you may not know which wineries will be there?  The Remedy… I have the list here for you.  With my many years past association with the South World Wine Society I can let you know [...]

In my previous article about preparing for your Summer Wine Trip in the Southern Hemisphere, I outlined most of the wine producing countries and some airline ticket prices from Canada to those countries.  This is Part 2 of this article, where you will get to know a bit about the signature grapes of Chile and [...]

This Part 2 of my review of my picks from the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival.  Part 1 covered the wines of Spain.  Part 2 is the rest of the world. Again, there are so many wines at the tasting, and so little time, I’m sure I missed many great wines.  If you tasted some [...]

In Part 1 of of my trip notes to Chile, I talked about the Casablanca and Maipo Valleys, plus gave you some information about the following wineries: – Casas del Bosque – Vina Santa Rita – Vina Undurraga – Vina Tarapaca ex Zavala In Part 2 of my trip notes, I am going to cover [...]

This October, I spent two weeks touring Chile, which of course included visiting several wineries. I had made appointments ahead of time with the winemakers so that I could go through their wines with them, as they would be the best knowledge of their wines. The Chilean people are very hospitable. My meetings with the [...]

In the first part of my notes on the 31st Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival I talked about BC wines as this was the featured region. But there was more than just BC wines at the festival. I will spend some time talking about the International wines that I was able to try. Some of [...]