Tag: santa rita

At this point of my trip to Chile I had visited wineries from the Aconcagua and the Casablanca Valleys.  Now I visited a few wineries closer to Santiago in the Maipo Valley, then headed south to the Colchagua Valley.   A Visit to Wineries of the Maipo Valley Around Santiago Around Santiago is the Maipo Valley, which is the oldest wine…

Have you tried any wine from Brasil before?  Did you know that there are wineries in Brasil?  You may think of the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema in Rio de Janiero, but if you go to the cooler climate in Southern Brasil you will find vineyards that were started by European settlers in the 1500s and continues today. I received…

Vineyards surround Chile’s capital of Santiago. In the 19th century, Santiago’s rich moved to the valley around Santiago to try their hand as a landowner. They planted vineyards and built large estates. Despite Santiago’s growth and rapid consumption of arable land the Maipo Valley still thrives. It lies between the Andes and the coastal mountains, which keep the climate dry…

Chile is blessed with perfect conditions to grow grapes; a varied climate, warmer and drier in the north, and wetter and cooler in the south.  A dry climate and soil types not conducive to the phyloxera louse allow Chilean vineyards to be grown on their own rootstock, not grafted.  Some say that this allows you to taste the “true” flavour…

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 from the Pacific Ocean.  With…

This is not a New Years Resolution. It is too late in January for that.  What this is, is a suggested list of wines, or styles of wines, that you may want to consider trying.  Maybe you have never tried wines from Argentina? Why not?  With my list below, I give some reasons you may want to try these wines. …

My last event at the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival was “Speaking Frankly About Franc“. I was eagerly waiting for this seminar as I really enjoy drinking Cabernet Franc. A grape that is at home in Bordeaux and in the Loire Valley. It is used as a blending grape in Bordeaux, as a minor partner to Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot….

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 wines that I had tried…

One of the great things about the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival is that you can meet winery principals either at a wine maker dinner, a seminar, or at their winery’s table at the International Festival Tasting room.  In case you don’t know who will be attending the Festival this year, here is some background on a few of the…

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 that there are many very…