On our way back down to Leo’s improvised shelter, Andrea and I debated if we had time to taste Leo’s wines because we had to drive back to Santiago. It was past five and what would normally take five hours to drive in any normal car would take us seven. We knew we’d have to take it easy out of...[ read more ]
“You need to find the proper mother for your wines… and a vineyard’s geology is the number one consideration,” Pedro said, as we drove towards his vineyards in Guarilihue. What was true 450 years ago when the Spanish Conquistadors settled in Concepcion is still true today. They recognized that Itata was a perfect mother for their vineyards because of the soil...[ read more ]
Off-roading through a bumpy, hilly and winding dirt road for what seemed an eternity, we headed into the Itata Valley wilderness, our destination an ancient granite vineyard surrounded by pine and eucalyptus. Along the way we were joined by one of Pedro’s grape growers, Juan Palma. Juan comes from a family with a 300-year-old lineage, centuries of passed down vineyard...[ read more ]
As Pedro said, “Chile is deeply wrong with wine,” the tempo of the Wayne Shorter seemed to pick up. “Chile has a great geology, with different climates, but the wines are mostly the same… but in a bad way,” he said , pushing his glasses up the ridge of his nose (he does this about every minute while he...[ read more ]
