January 2010
9 posts
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William Cole Winery
This guy is from Wyoming, made his money in software, then he ended up in Chile somehow. The vineyard was established somewhere around 1999, and they are supposedly finally breaking even. I’m not particularly sure I want to spend $20 million to establish my piece of heart and soul here. I’ll also be sure to learn the language of the country I want to expat to. They utilize a...
Catrala y Matetic
Today we visited two very interesting wineries in the Casablanca and San Antonio regions.
First up was Viña Catrala in Casablanca (www.catrala.cl). This vineyard is located deep in the forest, reachable by a 10 minute dirt road that doesn’t seem fit for a tour bus. It was started in 1994, situated next to a national park, and encompasses 70 ha of vineyards. Its proximity to the national park...
Casablanca
In the morning we visited Kross, an independent brewery (www.kross.cl). Our host was Asborn Gerlach, the operations manager. This man has been in the brewing business for 22 years. He started off in Germany, but eventually moved to Chile because of a woman. Gerlach gave us some quick insight into the Chilean beer market and Kross’ strategy. Gerlach decided to brew beer in Chile because the...
My weekend antics
I finally decided to go out with the undergrads on Friday night, and I didn’t end up coming back til 430 in the morning. It started out innocently enough where we all decided we needed to get some dinner after such a long day. The “Irish Pub” was packed, so we decided to go towards a spot some other people had found a previous night. After walking for what seemed like hours, some guy comes up to...
Today was a long day
You know those days that you think will never end? Today was one of those days. I don’t know who the bigger sadist in this story is: The Austral Group for scheduling so many meetings in one day or the SSU Wine MBA program for requiring the MBA students to blog about every single item in our calendar. Nonetheless, it was obviously an incredibly informative day.
We started the day’s meetings with...
3rd day – Pisco, WinesofChile, VinNova
In our morning meeting, we met with the export manager from Capel, Chile’s top Pisco producer, who gave us an introduction to Chile’s premier liquor spirit. Pisco is a distilled spirit made from mostly Muscat grapes. Varietals include Pink muscat, Muscat of Alexandria, Muscat of Austria, Torrontes, and Pedro Jimenez. Vineyards are located in Northern Chile where there are extreme temperatures. The...
ProChile + Concha y Toro
Today we had a presentation by ProChile in the morning and had of tour and tasting at Concha y Toro winery in the afternoon. ProChile is an organization that deals with the promotion of Chilean exports. Our speaker provided a great introduction to the country of Chile and what makes it so unique. One fascinating characteristic of Chile is that it is naturally protected on all four sides: in the...
1st Impressions
After a total of 15+ hours in airports and airplanes, our group finally landed in Santiago, Chile (5 hours ahead of PST). The airport is deceiving in the fact that planes approach from the barren countryside when landing which leaves one with the impression that there is not much to expect in Santiago. However, that impression is quickly dissipated as you leave the airport and enter the...
First post
This is my first post. Test. I am leaving for Chile on Monday.. must blog later.