Our first activity was a visit to Vina Indomita, a very popular and successful winery in Chile. Before visiting the winery, the only thing I knew about making wine was that you needed grapes. The company visit covered the entire wine production process.
The wine maker has to know a lot about the biology of the grapes to produce good tasting wine, and the timing for all the steps in the process is crucial. For example, the grapes have to be harvested as soon as they accumulate the perfect amount of sugar, and the wine needs a specific amount of time to age or else it will turn into vinegar. The white wine that Vina Indomita produces requires 10 days to ferment, and the red wine requires a month. The winery sells a little more red wine than white wine because red wine is more popular in Chile. One of the most interesting parts of the visit was the tour of the barrel room where all of the wines age.
I didn't know that wines took AT LEAST a year to age before you can drink them! The aging room requires a lot of care and maintenance. The humidity, temperature and lighting have to be kept just right for the wines to taste good. High temperatures can cause a separation of the alcohol, and too much oxygen in the barrels may make the wine taste like the wood of the barrel or turn the wine into vinegar. My favorite part of visiting Vina Indomita was the wine tasting of course! We tried all three types of wine, but I liked the white wine the best.
After our visit to Vina Indomita, we took a tour of Pablo Neruda house in Isla Negra. Pablo Neruda was a famous Chilean poet who played a big role in promoting socialism and bringing European immigrants to Southern Chile. His house was beautiful!
Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the house. I learned a lot of interesting facts about Pablo Neruda. He loved the sea and trains, so his house was decorated with a lot of artifacts from ships and some of the rooms in the house resembled train cars. Not only did he write beautiful poetry (with his green ink pens), but he also studied bugs and birds. One of my favorite pieces in his house was the table made from a wagon wheel, the same table he used to hold meetings with Chilean political leaders. I thought it was really cool that the people who run the museum dedicated a room to the house for Pablo Neruda's sea shell collection. He began collecting sea shells shortly before he passed away, and it was one of his wishes to have a large sea shell collections, so the museum fulfilled this wish for him. Pablo Neruda and his wife, Matilda, are buried behind his sea side house right where the land meets the sea (just as he wanted).
After touring Pablo Neruda's house, we had our last salsa dancing lesson. Salsa dancing is my favorite form of Latin American dancing. It can be both upbeat or slow, and there's many different variations of salsa. We actually learned a salsa dance choreography that was the same steps as the electric slide (now I know where that came from)!
Saturday and Sunday are our free days so I'm not too sure what we are going to be doing. I'm sure it will be just as adventurous as the other days we have spent here!
No comments:
Post a Comment