My awesome Spanish school 'Tandem' organizes outings every Wednesday. This Wednesday (in the true spirit of Wednesdays...) a bunch of people got hammered at an organic winery.
HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED: 20 of us crammed on a bus that was about 10 degrees too hot. Normally I complain about how damn cold it is here, but all I did the entire bus ride was complain about the heat. One might way I was..."whining". OH, HAHA, HAHAHAHA, HAHAHAHAHA, SO FUNNY!
The house that the owners live in is your typical Spanish colonial house of the 1800s. You know, wrought iron doors and windows, 7 bathrooms, high ceilings so you don't die of carbon monoxide poisoning. The usual. BACK IN THE DAY there happened to be a lot of restrictions surrounding the distribution of wine. To keep themselves alive, vineyards started growing other fruits like kiwis, apples and peaches. The guide lady said that the vineyard also used to specialize in chestnuts (chestyard?), but in these modern times people apparently hate chestnuts because they're too busy on the internet...or drinking Tang in their spaceships or something. I managed to snap some pictures of the now defunct chestyard.
R.I.P Chestnuts. Keep doin' ya thang Andes!
The owner's PRIVATE RESERVE!! Actually that's a lie. These grapes are for putting in your mouth.
The staff of the vineyard actually live on the premises. They've built their houses around the crops, buy their groceries from the wine company and even have their own church.
Certifiably creepy since 1899.
Legend (aka history) has it that over 1 million years ago (aka 1899) a flood infiltrated the vineyard. The workers of said vineyard prayed for a miracle. 24 hours later the flooding stopped. All that remained after the flood was a picture of Saint Maria...or maybe it was J.C.? Whatever. Point is, all that was left was some Saint painting! To commemorate the awesome saintly powers of said Saint painting, they vineyard holds a party every September 24th. THE END.
Afterward we attended a wine tasting. The guide tried very hard to explain all the nuances of the wines we were drinking. Did inhale the bouquet of blackberry and vanilla aromas? Did our palates register the smooth but plummy finish? In short: no. To be honest, people just wanted to get their DRANK ON! For the first five minutes people swished the wine around and stuck their noses in the glass like they gave a shit. By minute six people were knockin' 'em back! To properly absorb all the tastes of the wine, you are not supposed to eat while drinking...
...The majority of us stumbled over to the vineyard.
It's winter in Chile, so the grape vines have zero grapes on them. The fields looked a lot like a bunch of dead trees. Regardless, the view was spectacular.
Grape vines sans grapes.
Look! Human beings!
After that we stopped by the factory. We got to take a look at these amazing wooden wine barrels.
Oooh...
Ahhh...
Beautiful. SPOILER ALERT: There's no wine in them. Instead, the wine is kept in these aluminum barrels because they're easier to clean.
They may be easier to clean, but that doesn't stop them from being fugly. HEY OH!
On a less ugly note, I managed to find these beauties on my way out.
Not much else to report. Other than the fact that I'm hungry.
I declare it to be dinner time. BYE!
