When geese are the biggest problem in making wine

Last weekend I took a trip to the Colchagua valley, about 2.5 hours south of Santiago, Chile. Colchagua was chosen in 2005 by the Wine Enthusiast magazine as the best place in the world to grow red wines.

Part of the dilemma to travel to these ‘wine routes’ is how to divide the driving. We all want to drink up, yet we still have to move the car from one winery to the other. I tried my best to keep a steady hand behind the wheel, and luckily there weren’t many people on the road.

We drove away from the main road to get to some wineries, and the vineyards climbed all the way up the hills.

If anyone was threatened by my driving, it was these Chilean ‘cowboys.’

I have visited wineries in Niagara Falls and nearby Santiago before, so I wasn’t as curious about visiting a mainstream place. My mother spotted the sign for Emiliana Organico, and off we were to visit one of the few organic wineries in the country.

Making compost with the leftovers from the wine press

The winery is certified organic and biodynamic. They used no chemical pesticides or fertilizers, and took care to find a spot where there would be no wind or water contamination from other nearby wineries that do use chemicals (the place is protected by hills on all sides).

While the main crop is obviously grapes, they intercropped a number of flowers and bushes to attract insects that would keep pests under control. They also planted a bunch of olive trees, and have a secondary production business of organic olive oil (which is pretty good).

Pest control — llamas. They also have a bunch of geese walking around, but the problem is that when they run out of insects to eat, they start with the grapes.

Who knew geese were into cabernet sauvignon?

The place strives to be a closed-loop system, which means that all the inputs are produced in the farm. However, they don’t have the facilities to house the necessary cows to produce enough fertilizer so they buy it from outside. They do have a few hundred chickens to add extra fertilizer and eat the insects (and apparently they have trouble dealing with all the eggs they lay because they are not interested in setting up an egg business).

After picking the grapes, they crush them in these huge containers (in front of which we took a touristy souvenir picture with my grandma, mother and mother’s partner, Felix).

After the huge container, they mature the juice in these much smaller oak barrels. The longer they stay here, the more expensive the wine.

At the end of our tour we sampled two wines — a premium chardonnay and their coyam blend (cabernet sauvignon, syrah, carmenere, merlot and mouvedre). The chardonnay was great, but coyam blew me away. It is by far one of the best wines I’ve ever had (it’s their second most expensive bottle, it only costs 20 bucks, and it’s organic!). I asked them about the rather friendly price point, and they replied that in Chile people don’t understand the concept of organic as much so they are pricing their products more or less at the same level than the non-organic competition; definitely works for me! The same applied to the olive oil — I’d have easily paid double the 5 bucks I paid for a bottle.

I was tempted to take my shoes off, pretend I was in a Greek festival, and start crushing away.

Viu Manent’s tasting room

We later visited Viu Manent, the oldest winery in the region. This place was way more touristy, and the staff less knowledgable. We settled for their sampling menu, and tried five different reserve wines. The sauvignon blanc was so bad my mother poured it away and I thought it tasted like over-fermented blue cheese. The staff was so bitter about their wages that we engaged in conversation on how they could immigrate to Canada or Australia. The saviour of the night was a Malbec, but certainly not enough to win me over.

When we returned to the car, I noticed that my mom’s purse was fatter than usual, and certainly fatter than 20 minutes before. Once I drove off, my mom produced a rather pretty wine sampling glass she stole. While I was busy taking pictures, she wondered off into one of the premium tasting rooms, and decided to get her money’s worth from the crappy sampling in the form of a glass.