Santa Cruz

  Santa Cruz, Chile
Tuesday, March 4, 2008

We finally managed to find our way out of the city of Santiago after picking up a hire car and travelling the same road 3 times trying to find an entry to a flyover. A GPS would have been handy but the company we rented from was out of them.
Anyway, once out on the open road we were fine and after the usual industrial outskirts of a city we were in the countryside in agricultural areas with roadside stalls selling fruit and vegetables. After we turned off the Pan-American highway, into the Colchagua valley, heading to Santa Cruz we drove past endless fields of corn and grape vines. Beautiful weather and countryside made it a pleasant drive.
The town of Santa Cruz (about 200km S of Santiago) is very small and our hotel was in the pretty town square. It was built in the style of a hacienda and had beautiful gardens with climbing scented roses, geraniums, bouganvillae, scented jasmine as well as more tropical palms. The area has a Mediterranean style climate and we headed straight for the outdoor pool for a cooling swim to relax after our drive. 

Santa Cruz hotel room and museum

The owner of the hotel was an international arms dealer and he also built and owns the museum next door which our room overlooked. We thought that we would pop in to the museum for a quick look and 3 hours later had not seen everything. It is an amazing and well designed, if eclectic, collection (including lots of arms displays). One of our favourite sections was the collection of beautifully restored carriages from the 19th century. The collection of over 20 antique cars was incredible too. He must be an amazing collector. One could spend days in there.
Breakfasts at the hotel were excellent with a daily selection of the seasonal fresh fruit from the region including tiny sweet blackberries, strawberries and peaches. They also had home-made preserves including fig jam and bitter marmalade which we both love. Outside the restaurant was a fig tree and David was just tall enough to reach some. He also managed to pick some table grapes from the vines in the area.
The town is also the centre of the Colchagua Valley wine region and we visited 3 of the wineries; 1 traditional, 1 modern and 1 organic. 

Viu Manent horse and cart tour

 The tradional one, Viu Manent, starts the tour with a ride through the vineyards in a horse-drawn carriage and ends with tasting at the old Hacienda where we also had lunch. (The restaurant manager is from Adelaide).

Viu Manent lunch

The modern one, Montes, has been designed along Feng Shui principles and is absolutely stunning in the most beautiful location and so peaceful.

Montes Vineyard

They play Gregorian chants to the wine in the barrel room. I am sure you are wondering what David made of all this. Well he did make a few comments but he could not deny that it is a very special place with a tranquil atmosphere and they do produce excellent wine.

Entrance to Montes winery

 The organic one, Emiliana, was interesting  with chickens and llamas sharing the vineyards.
Visiting the wineries here is different from Australia as one usually has to pay to take a guided tour and cannot just visit to taste. Some are hidden behind big closed gates with a guard. Quite a different experience.
We were in Santa Cruz over a weekend which happened to have an outdoor film festival in the square. So we had dinner at a restaurant  sitting outside under a canopy of vines dripping with grapes and watching the local people mill around the square to the sights and sounds of the film on the big screen. A great atmosphere.
Again we were made to feel welcome by the locals and when we had a battery problem we had to drive round town trying to buy an 'occy' strap. Don't even know if that's how you spell it but it wasn't in our Spanish phrasebok and was very hard to describe. Finally we found a mechanic who realised what we wanted but David was alarmed when he started searching in the garbage. He solved our wobbly battery problem with some strong wire that he exricated from a bin and, days later, it is still going well.
Great memories from Santa Cruz.
We then drove north-west towards the coast heading for our overnight stay in a 100 year old  hacienda in a vineyard. We had read about it in an article in the UK Daily Telegraph last year. After a few unexpected detours (problems with road-signs not the navigator) we arrived at Villa Matetic in the remote Rosario valley near San Antonio. We had done the reservation through their Santiago office but on arrival no-one spoke English. After lots of sign language we were taken to the villa and our room. 

David relaxing with tea at Matetic

The house is beautiful and has 3 ensuite bedrooms plus a lounge, dining room and kitchen. Our room was fantastic and the whole house beautifully decorated. We were the only guests there so had the house and estate to ourselves.There were 2 bikes provided so that we could ride around the gardens.

Liz biking Matetic Winery

We had not been on bikes for years but got the hang of it and enjoyed riding around the magnificent gardens.
Our stay there was really special and so relaxing.

Matetic Restaurant Liz and chef

 Dinner in the restaurant was delicious but breakfast surprised us more. We had been in the kitchen and seen breakfast provisions in the fridge(including a huge basket of fresh raspberries) and thought we would just help ourselves in the morning. Imagine our surprise when we walked into the dining room to find the table set for 2 with a huge spread and a waiter appeared to serve several courses.

Matetic breakfast

We felt like the Lord and Lady of the manor or whatever the Spanish equivalent would be. What a luxurious stay.
After breakfast we were given a personal tour of the Matetic winery which is another architect-designed beautiful modern facility in stunning countryside.
We then drove on through the Casablanca Valley and yet more vines and agricultural areas to the coast.
Our travels in these wine areas have been real eye-openers as we had no idea how advanced and modern or how beautiful the Chilean wineries are and the wines they produce match the facilities. We feel that Australia and the other wine-producing countries have serious competition and it is only beginning.

 Just a note on a wine story we found interesting. The grape variety of Carmenere is an old variety that used to be grown in France and other European countries until wiped out by Phylloxera. It was thought to be extinct until a vine expert was investigating why some of the Merlot grapes in Chile were so late in ripening. It turned out that some of the Chilean 'Merlot' was Carmenere which accounted for both the late-ripening and the distinctive taste of the Chilean 'merlot' These 2 factors had baffled experts for years. It wasn't until 1994 that French ampelographer(is that a real word?), Jean Michel Bourisiquot, discovered that these grapevines were actually the then "Lost Grape of Bordeaux", Carmenere. Chile is the only major wine country in the world that has never been affected by Phylloxera. It is believed to be because of the natural barriers of ocean, mountains and desert and more recently tough import controls. We understand that Australia and France are  now experimenting with Carmenere grapes.