I frequently travel to Chile on business. My last trip was in May of 2003, and I spent most of the time in Vina del Mar and Valparaiso, which have a lot to offer to visitors. Valparaiso is an old port, a little scruffy but with some beautiful Victorian houses perched on steep hills. Vina del Mar, about five miles north along the coast, is an upscale vacation destination for wealthy people from Chile and all over the world. Almost all of the tourist hotels and most of the restaurants are in Vina. However, there are now some interesting B&Bs in Valparaiso. The photo shows the Brighton B&B and Cafe just uphill from the old commercial center.

During this visit I had a little extra time to devote to wine tasting. I have drunk a lot of Chilean wine, both good and bad, but how to reliably find the good stuff remained a mystery to me. Most Chilean markets and liquor stores have a large selection of wines, but if you pick a bottle on the basis of a nice looking label or even a high price you are likely to get skunked. This is still a problem even though Chilean winemakers have improved the average quality of their products over what it was a decade ago.

Roberto Montero, of the tourist bureau in Vina del Mar (mobile phone 56-09-5581864), helped me arrange for a personal wine tasting tour of the Casa Blanca Valley with Ricardo Espinosa, a local guide. Ricardo is the man on the right. Since Ricardo speaks very little English, and I speak very little Spanish, Diego Montero volunteered to go along as a translator. He is the young man on the left. Diego doesn't drink, but he has an interest in wine and a degree in tourism, and his English is perfect. Ricardo, as the driver, drinks little but does taste wine and is quite knowledgeable. He is also a bit of a photographer.

The concept of wine tours is new to Vina del Mar. I presume that there are some group tours during the high tourist season, December through February. But in May I was the only one interested. Ricardo's tour fee was about $100 USD. His fax / telephone number is 56-32-611700.

Ricardo first took us to Los Perales, a vineyard and winery established a hundred years ago by a religious order. In recent years the order gave Los Perales to the employees who are still running it. It is sort of an operating museum of wine making. Some of the equipment and barrels must date back to the founding of the winery. Most modern wineries kill off the natural yeasts before introducing "thoroughbred" yeasts to do the fermenting of the crushed grapes. Not so with Los Perales; they depend upon the yeast on the grape skins plus whatever may be floating around in the air. That old winery must be a veritable zoo of wild yeasts.

Ricardo Nunez, one of the winemakers, showed us around. I bought a bottle of muscat, and he drew it from the barrel with a siphon. No label; no extraneous stuff.

It was lunch hour when we visited Los Perales so the pickers were not working in the vineyard. However, one of them let me take his picture while he was eating grapes - what else?

Diego and Ricardo told me that on Sunday afternoons Los Perales has an open house with food and events for the kids, including a greased pig chase.

After Los Perales we headed for the huge, new Veramonte winery in the Valle Casablanca. This winery has an opulent and very sterile showroom from which you can view, through glass, the tanks and vats. Veramonte is not very exciting, especially if you have had the chance to tour a smaller winery and smell the fermenting wine. Veramonte have wine tasting for a fee, which I actually prefer to free wine tasting because I don't feel guilty if I don't buy anything. I paid, tasted and bought some Sauvignon Blanc 2002 @ 4.900. The modern, sterile wineries generally do make better wine.

Working our way back through the Valle Casablanca we stopped at the elegant, modern restaurant and wine tasting room operated by Morande. The winery itself is not on display. I was intrigued by the restaurant menu, but Ricardo, our guide, said that he knew a cheaper and better place. I now regret not eating at Morande, and will do so next time I am in the Valle Casablanca. But I did buy some bottles of Terrarum Chardonay @ 3.200 and Pionero Sauv. Blanc @ 2.100. The trunk of the car was beginning to fill up.

Ricardo took us to another small winery, which was closed, and then on a brief tour of the vineyards and the town of Casablanca. The leaves on the vines were beginning to turn yellow and orange. The surrounding hills were sprinkled with the same dessicated vegetation we see in southern California; so it looked like home. The sky was gray and the weather cool; which is a characteristic of this area so close to the ocean.

Back in Vina del Mar, Roberto Montero of the tourist bureau told me about Vinoteca which he described as a local wine bar and restaurant where I could taste more good Chilean wines. I found Vinoteca at Av. San Martin 545 in the midst of some very upscale condominium highrise buildings. There was no restaurant that I could see, but they do have a lot of good wines displayed in a setting like an exclusive US wine store. I bought a J.A. Bouchon Malbec Las Mercedes for 4.600 and a William Cole Sauvignon Blanc for 3.800. These prices were about the same as the prices in the supermarkets and the winery tasting rooms! In retrospect I realize that the Vinoteca is probably the best place to shop for wine in the Vina del Mar / Valparaiso area; better selection, same prices as the supermarkets and tasting rooms.

My quest for quality Chilean wines was advanced considerably by the purcase of the 2003 edition of "La Guia de Vinos" by Patricio Tapia. It's in Spanish, but I can easily comprehend the difference between three and five stars. It seems to cover most of the recent vintages of all of the wines I could find in the stores; and it includes approximate prices - which are very helpful.

Armed with Patricio's guide I returned to the supermarket wine departments and scanned the shelves. The Ekono in Vina's new mega mall had several of his top picks including the Concha y Toro Merlot Trio 2001 selling for 3.899 pesos or about $5.51 USD. The guide price is 4.200 pesos, which is still only about $5.92 USD. Patricio gives it five stars and I agree. Considering the price, it is one of the best wine bargains I have ever encountered.

A New York Times article by Frank Prial (March 5, 2003) described a high-powered tasting of Chilean and Argentinian wines. Unfortunately, the experts tasted only a relatively few wines, and I couldn't find any of them in the Chilean supermarkets. It didn't sound like the tasters were particularly impressed by any of the Chilean wines except the Montes Alpha "M" La Finca Estate 1999, which sells in the US for $70! In one Chilean supermarket I found a different Montes Alpha wine for about $12 USD. I tasted it in my hotel room and it was not good. I poured it down the sink. That experience reinforced my impression that you need to taste wines before buying or you need a good guidebook like Patricio's.

When in Chile I searched Google newsgroups for information about wines. Newsgroups have some nuggets of information about obscure topics without all of the commercial pollution which is present on the Web. If you go to Google / groups and type in the search terms ...Chilean "Vancouver Wine Festival"... (without the dots) you will find Bill Spohn's personal tasting notes. Also try the search terms ..."Bill Spohn" Casablanca ... to find his notes specifically on Casablanca Valley wines.