Native Chilean bee in my garden People often ask me why they should pay more for a bottle of wine. I understand their point; we all have a limited budget that we need to cover all of life’s necessities and hopefully a few little extras, like wine. And if your tipple of choice is…
10 of Chile’s top red wine varieties
Chile is now the world’s fourth biggest exporter of bottled wine and its wine industry is more dynamic and varied than ever before. Winemakers are now producing dry and sweet, still and sparkling, white, rosé, red and even the odd amber-coloured wine from more than 70 different varieties. However, red wines are still very…
Celebrating the New Year
So, here we are again, marking the transition from one year to the next. How do you feel about it? Positive about the future? Glad to see the end of a difficult year? Or sorry to say goodbye to a year full of special times? I had one of those moments of rare insight…
Matetic Casona: an oasis of calm
Picture this: It’s 11 a.m. and the sun is already high in the cloudless sky, but you’re nice and cool, sitting in the shade of a mature Acacia tree, and there’s a hint of a breeze gently ruffling your hair. It’s quiet; just the sound of running water from the Californian poppy-fringed fountain and…
Celebrating Chilean sparkling wines
Every year, we get a group of people together to nobly taste their way through a selection of Chilean sparkling wines to choose the ones they like the most. This year 10 people of 4 different nationalities rose to the challenge and checked out 6 premium, in-bottle fermented sparkling wines (3 white, 3 rosé)…
How to choose sparkling wine (2)
This is a handy guide to understanding terms like in-bottle fermentation and traditional method that you often see on sparkling wine labels. Actually the biggest clue to what a sparkling wine is going to be like when you taste it can be found in these terms describing how the wine has been made. This is…
How to choose sparkling wine (1)
Fizz is in fashion and there is ever more choice lining the shelves of supermarkets and wine shops, so how to choose a sparkling wine that suits your taste and budget? Champagne is often the first thing that comes to mind, these days closely followed by Prosecco, but let’s face it, Champagne and Prosecco are wines…
English-Spanish Sparkling wine glossary
The idea behind this handy English-Spanish sparkling wine glossary is to help you understand foreign sparkling wine labels or for use by anyone studying wine. Comments and suggestions are very welcome. Blanc de Blancs A wine made only from white grapes, often 100% Chardonnay. Blanc de Blancs Un vino elaborado solo con uvas blancas, con frecuencia…
Trip to Maule with 80 Harvests
Our trip to Maule had as much to do with tradition, people and sustainability as it did with wine. So it’s fitting that our first stop on the way there was at Miguel Torres Chile, a winery that champions Fair Trade and sustainable winemaking, where technical director Fernando Almeda was able to give us…
Chile’s Luxury Wine Fair 2017
The biggest and best of Chile’s annual wine fairs – Feria de Vinos de Lujo or Luxury Wine Fair- attracted droves of winelovers and glitterati once again in 2017, despite its unfortunate timing just two weeks before Christmas and the sharp rise in the entry price. The draw is the wine, of course, with 80 Chilean…