After we recovered from the holiday celebrations and family visiting, erin and i took some time to get to know Santiago. Aside from seeing the city and all its splendors, we focused particularly on the plethora of Chilean vineyards. A 30 minute bus ride took us to wine land. And we were able to visit quite a few vineyards in one day. You end up paying something like 6 USD to visit the vineyard and taste up to 3 different wines. I´ve learned quite a bit about grape growing, vineyards, wine making, and wine tasting.
Though many of the traditional wine growing principals are followed, chile is able to produce a unique product becuase of the properties of the regions where they grow the wine. A vine growing father up a hill on a vineyard will produce a comepletely different tasting grape than one grown lower on the hill. Traditionally, roses are planted at the end of each vineyard. This tradition coming from europe, is done becuase roses are the most succeptable to disease, so if any one rosebush got a pest, the growers would know that that particular vine was also about to be attacked by a pest. However, being a geographically protected place (desert in the north, andes mountains to the east, ocean to the west, and antartica to the south) chile does not have a pest problem, but they still do plant the rose bushes, to follow tradition.
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