December 30-January 1
Santiago was great, but we were pumped to head to Valparaiso. Pipe, Mike’s brother, and his wife, Krystal, flew into Santiago around 3am on the 30th and after a few hours sleep that morning in the hotel, we drove to Valparaiso, via one winery stop at Casas del Bosque.
A quick note about one specific type of Chilean wine: Carménère. So Carménère was a blending grape from Bordeaux. When Chilean winemakers were buying vines from France and other parts of Europe in the mid 1800’s, the French did something a little mean: they sold this vine to the Chileans pretending that it was Merlot. It was planted along side Merlot so when it began to produce grapes, the Chileans thought it was just bad Merlot. They tried to harvest it at the same time, but it wasn’t ready. Also the leaves change color in the fall to a deep orange/red color, which Merlot does not. Back in France, Phylloxera hit which wiped out a bunch of varietals. Since Chileans didn’t realize they had Carménère and all of the Carménère in France had been wiped out, people thought this varietal was gone forever. Fast forward to 1994 and a grape expert came over to Chile and noticed that some of the “Merlot” took longer to ripen. The botanist did some research and discovered that nearly 50% of the Merlot planted in Chile was actually Carménère. It was recognized in 1998 as a distinct variety and now has an official holiday: November 24th is Carménère Day. Now that they know it’s a different grape, they produce the wine differently and it’s super delicious. The glass we had at Casas del Bosque was really full bodied and peppery. No wines are technically from Chile (or Argentina for that matter) because they were all brought over from Europe, but this is the closest thing to Chile having its own varietal.
One more quick side note: we heard another anecdote about Chilean Champagne. As some of you know, people around the world are not allowed to call sparkling wines “Champagne” unless they are specifically from the Champagne region of France. We heard a variation of this story from two different wineries, but the story I like better is that during WWII when Germany was invading France, French winemakers brought vines from Champagne to Chile to save them. After the war, the French came back for their vines and were so grateful to the Chileans that they allowed them to continue producing their sparkling under the name “champagne”. We heard there is only like one winery left that still is able to, but I’m not able to find any info on the internet, so for now, just an interesting story.
After arriving in Valpo, we popped into our AirBNB to drop off our stuff and then headed to a cooking class! Michael had booked us all as a surprise to Phil and Krystal and we were super excited to try out some Chilean dishes. It turns out that Chilean food is not difficult, but just requires a lot of chopping. Krystal rocked the Asada Leche (dessert), I worked on the ceviche and the corn dish and Pipe and Michael mostly fought through some super tiny chopping for the salsa and the ceviche.
Pebre is the name for the salsa which Chileans put on everything – bread, meat, all courses. Empanadas de Pino are the traditional empanadas that are dough filled with beef, onions, one olive and one raisin. Our teacher also talked us through the different folding techniques for the empanadas. Each filling has a different fold, so you can tell by the fold what type of filling is in the empanada.
Pastel de Choclo is a chicken dish that also has the Pino mixture from the empanadas along with one olive and one raisin. The story we got about the olive and the raisin is that they make the different bites interesting and different. After you put all of those ingredients in a single serve clay pan, you pour a corn and milk mixture (the choclo part of the dish) on top. Leche Asada is a dessert that is reminiscent of creme brûlée or the South African dish melk tart (per Phil).
Pisco is a traditional liquor that most Chileans and Peruvians pair with sour mix – so we learned how to make those. Note – both Chileans and Peruvians think they way they make it is the best. Then vino is self explanatory. We didn’t make it. We just drank it. Finally – merken- we also didn’t make this. It is a Chilean spice that we picked up at the market. It is smoky and spicy delicious.
After the class, we went out to wander the streets and see some of the amazing street art. I’m going to do an entire post dedicated to this, so no pictures for now. While we were out in the streets, we saw the rest of the class who were heading to a bar, so we tagged along.
It was a great group of randoms: Tom and the girl whose name I can’t remember from Canada, Catherine from outside Seattle, Charlotte from London, Robbert from Holland. After two drinks, we went back out into the city to see what was going on.
Valparaiso is awesome.
There were musicians in the street – just playing to play – not looking for money or anything. It was legitimately just musicians who enjoyed being there and playing music.
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_0427.trim-1.movAlso – dancers in the street!! They were all young and really incredible. It was a lot of fun seeing them and made me a little sad that Michael and I don’t know how to dance. Look at the amazing leg swoop in this video:
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_0532.trim-2.movAnd this:
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_0532.trim-3.movI loved it!!! And then Phil and Krystal got involved. It wasn’t pretty. It was ridiculous, but they stayed out of the way of the “professionals” and we all thoroughly enjoyed it! For those of you who don’t know Phil and Krystal – see if you can pick them out of this video:
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_0535.trim-4.movAll in all, the city was amazing. It had such a great young, artistic feel. I loved it. I want to go back at some point and see what the city is like when it isn’t overrun by so many additional people. We’ve heard that there are 2mm additional people in the city (to add to its 1mm residents) and I’ve also heard 1mm additional people. Either way – the city didn’t feel crowded, it felt busy and exciting. I can’t wait to come back.