Sunday, July 17, 2016

Santiago Day 3 Underraga Winery

Today, we decided to let someone else to the driving. We signed up to do a tour of Underraga winery with Turistik, the Chilean bus tour company. It was terrific!

Underraga is located about 40km WSW of Santiago in the Maipo valley, near a community called Mélipilla. The Underraga family bought the land the winery is on in the 1870s and planted the first vines in 1885. Today, the company owns small plots of land in many areas. They are known for experimenting with the effects of different soil compositions on grapes and their resulting wines. 

The Camenera is a uniquely Chilean wine. The vines were originally brought over from Europe in the last century, then lost, as in confused with other vines. There were plagues of pests in Europe that wiped out the Carmenera and it wasn't until the 1990s that DNA tests were done on the vines to rediscover them. So, although the vines have been native to Chile for over 100 years, the Carmenera is still considered a new varietal.

We tasted 4 wines - all winners. And they let us keep our glasses - that never happens in Niagara.






This one was the winner.
This one is like an ice wine - very sweet and syrupy, but better than ice wine, I thought.

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