Music: Royksopp - Junior
Today I was picked up by the same guide that I had yesterday for the city tour and was taken out, past the airport, in the direction of Valparaiso. First on the tour was a visit to the Matetic vineyard. This small boutique vineyard has it's main building sat on the top of a hill, surrounded by the vines. It is, apparently, the plaything of a very rich industrial family, and has only been in existence for 18 years or so. It won it's first medals in competition in only it's second year of production (2002 I think) and has maintained that standard ever since.
The vines themselves are grown organically, using 300 chickens to eat the insects that attack the vines, and 3000 sheep to keep the vines clear of weeds. The vineyard itself forms only a tiny percentage of a very large farm owned by the family in the valley. We toured the facilities and were given a bit of a run down on the methods used - hand picking of grape bunches, hand selecting grapes for inclusion, etc. The manual input into the process is unchanged from that of centuries ago but the winery uses state of the art technology for ensuring maturation and fermentation temperatures, also during the storage and final clearing of the wine.
After a brief tasting session we headed into Vino Del Mer for lunch and then toured Valparaiso itself. After that I was driving back to the hotel and dropped off, to be picked up at 6am tomorrow to be taken to the airport.
This evening I watched MoTD2 on the BBC iPlayer (thanks to a UK proxy service I'm now paying for) and have also seen the highlights of the rugby games from over the weekend.
That's about it for the time being... until tomorrow :)
PS. Rolf is pictured looking out over the Pacific Ocean from Vino Del Mer.
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