Chile - Wine Country Part II

Cousiño-Macul cellars, Santiago, Chile

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Santiago has a couple of great wineries accessible by public transport, and I had a few days to kill.  It was a match made in heaven.

Chilean wine is good, and its cheap, which makes it good for people without a lot of money to spend but who like something a step up from Franzia or Yellow Tail.

The two wineries I visited were very different - Cousiño-Macul is a medium-sized winery that has been owned by the same family for over a century.  The site is quaint and the corporate culture has that small-company feel.

Concha y Toro, on the other hand, is Chile´s largest winery and South America´s largest exporter.  The Company´s revenues are nearly a billion dollars and it is publicly traded on the NYSE.  The culture is professional and efficient.

Wines at both places were fantastic.  They have some highly rated wines for $20 or less.  Concha´s Marques de Casa Concha label and Cousiño´s Antiguas Reservas label are both very good.  

Cousiño-Macul cellars, Santiago, Chile.  These big oak fermentation tanks were in use until about a decade ago.

The more modern kind of wine production.  Cousiño-Macul, Chile.

This year´s production in stainless steel tanks.  Cousiño-Macul, Chile.

Cousiño-Macul cellars, Chile.

Cousiño-Macul cellars, Chile.  Most of the company´s wine is aged in another, much larger, facility offsite.

Cousiño-Macul cellars, Chile.

Cousiño-Macul family cellars, Chile.  These old bottles are part of the family´s private wine collection.

Cousiño-Macul.  A 1937 cab on display.

Cousiño-Macul showroom, Santiago, Chile

Cousiño-Macul logo, Chile

Cousiño-Macul´s midrange wine. Retails for about $20 in the states.

Enjoying a little wine tasting at the vineyard.

Some Brazilians being fabulous as they wait for their shuttle after the wine tasting.

Concha y Toro - Chile´s biggest winery.  The restaurant and showroom is located on an estate that used to be the family´s summer home!  Here is the main house / mansion.

Concha y Toro varietal garden, Santiago, Chile

Concha y Toro cellars, Santiago, Chile

Concha y Toro uses a combination of French and American oak barrels... apparently French oak is more expensive.  The barrels cost a few thousand dollars, they use them for a few years, and then re-sell them to other 2nd tier wine producers, or port producers. 

Concha y Toro cellars, Santiago, Chile

Concha y Toro cellars, Santiago, Chile. It gets dark down there!  Like Cousiño-Macul, the company moved its main production facilities far outside of Santiago a long time ago and only a few wines spend time here, to give tourists a sense of what the winery used to be like.

Concha y Toro cellars, Santiago, Chile

May 27th - Adios, Don Quixote

I took my time driving to Santiago.  It was a warm, sunny day and I only had 100km to do.

Somehow, I managed to navigate the city and find Motoaventura Chile, at 8000 John F. Kennedy, northeast of the city center.

I had made it.

But it almost seemed like a non-event.  I went through my checklist - repack, clean my helmet, check the bike back in, calculate the damages.

The Don had suffered a bit of wear and tear.  The rear brake light had gone out completely, the front brake caliper was clogged with dirt, which meant I did the last 500km without much of a front brake, and the tires were pretty worn.  There was also a broken gas cap, my fault since I had been loopy one morning and kicked it after fueling up in Valparaiso.  I hope they fixed that on the new model GS because it is really, really annoying to kick your gas cap in the morning and realize that you just caused $200 of damage.

My trail backpack felt foreign,  too heavy.  I was making the transition from motorcycle traveler to backpacker again.  There's less anxiety, there's more camaraderie at the local hostels, but there's less adventure.  I felt like I was trading in my flying wings, or getting a desk job, or something.

That afternoon I felt triumphant.  I had driven over 7,000 miles, some of it in pretty extreme conditions, and somehow, miraculously, I didn't get anything more serious than some windburn.  Secretly, I think I was expecting worse, maybe a lot worse.  There were a couple of close calls - getting lost north of Mendoza, the fried battery in Salta... but they all turned out OK.

Letting go of the bike meant letting go of a bit of liberty, but also some of those anxieties that were sitting in the attic of my brain for the last three months.

And I felt ready to head back to family and friends, even if I wasn´t ready to stop traveling.  My biggest fear hitting the road was getting lonely, isolated - whatever you want to call it.  Somehow, that never happened.  Between hostels, Skype, and the kindness of strangers I always felt like there were kindred spirits around me.

I wonder how the feeling will change over time... I´m writing this in early June and I already miss the open road a bit.

Hanging up the helmet for the last time...

12,000km

Heading toward the finish line... total count - 12,200km, or 7,320 miles.

Mutumbo

How about this for a quirky candy bar with politically incorrect sexual overtones.

Roadside snacks

There´s a region just north of Santiago that´s famous for sweets, La Ligua (if memory serves me right...)

It´s kind of quirky, and probably a little dangerous, but all along the highway there are women with little baskets of cookies and pastries that wave down oncoming cars with those little white flags.  Folks stop, stock up, and then keep going.