I found this company that has tours that include biking and wine tasting. Well, dang! Sign me up. The tour I bought was a bit expensive but it looked interesting: a visit to three different small, family-owned vineyards with lunch at the end. And a bike ride through the vineyards.
Maipo Valley is probably the biggest around Santiago and certainly the most accessible. Two australians were also on the tour. The guide was a young chilean guy who more or less spoke english. They took us to the wine country in a van that brought the bikes for us to ride.
Normally this is the kind of thing I eschew: carrying bikes in a van; only riding for part of the trip; the van actually followed us while we rode on the road, etc. But seriously, when in Rome, keep your damn mouth shut and you will have a good time.
The tour was more intimate and quiet than a corporate Concha Y Toro trip likely is. The guide was charming and funny. We went to a small organic winery whose owner gave us tastes from the big barrels and showed all the ways in the which last year´s big earthquakes messed up their business.
It was a good day but I would not pay so much money again for a tour.
In a future post I will wax nostalgic for the days when Chile only had about 4 wine producers. It was a hell of a lot easier to buy wine back then.
On the way back, we could see the cordillera from our car. This does not happen every day thanks to smog. I hope to see the Andes again soon!
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