Today, we had our arranged wine tour. We left the hotel at 10:00 am and drove to the Santa Rita Winery. There, they culivate grapes on 2000 ha of land, producing 120.000.000 bottles of wine per year, employing 3.000 full time complemented by another 3.000 for crush. The bottling machine handles 10.000 bottles per hour. We had a nice winery tour and tasted two wines produced there. The winery also boasts a wonderful little museo which presents some fantastic displays of pre-hispanic artifacts. The gold display cabinet was particularly impressive.
On our way to lunch, we stopped at a roadside bakery and bought some fresh bread. The advertisement for this is a white flag displayed on the roadside (white for flour, as opposed to red for meat and green for vegatables). Apparently this is a traditional rural vendor arrangement. The bread was muy bueno! For lunch we moved on to Restaurante La Vaquita Echa where we had large portions of beef and lamb while being entertained by dancers in costume. The restaurant boasted an open fire pit inside with a smoke hood which complimented dirt floors inside and out!
On our way to the next winery, we stopped at a roadside memorial to 5 bodyguards for Agusto Pinochet who were killed in a failed assassination attemp. Last stop was a
t a winery called Cava del Raco where we received a personal tour and description of this very small family winery by the owner. Here they cultivate grapes on 175 ha, the bottling apparatus handles 6 bottles at a time (changed by hand). The owner gave us loads of information about his business completed with a tasting of the 6 wines he makes. He also demonstrated his "digital" labelling machine. This was a great juxtaposition against Santa Rita.
