Viña Santa Rita and back to Santiago

The initial plan to get up early and extend the tour by 15 km was stopped short at 08:00. Both our behinds hurt from yesterday’s bike ride and we already had 63 km to go anyways.

So, we enjoyed the breakfast and left without a hurry at 10:30 to go to Santa Rita winery. The weather started out very cloudy but soon the sun came out and we couldn’t escape it on the flat roads of the valley.

Viña Santa Rita is a publicly listed company and one of the big three producers in Chile (and South America). They have >3,500 hectares of vineyards with many different varieties of grapes - huge when compared to 90 hectares for the winery we visited yesterday.

The tour with Daniel was again an interesting one, especially because of the longer history of the winery. We were a tour of 30 people which could of course not compare with El Principal. The wines that we tasted were nice but not as exquisite. The price points were much lower as well: 4.50, 5.50, and 12.50 per bottle compared to 20.00, 45.00, and 130.00 per bottle yesterday. So something for everyday. This is exemplified by the quantity of wine sold: Santa Rita sells 50 million bottles in Chile alone - for 18 million people. So they must be drinking it quite often :-)

The way back to the bicycle rental was less difficult than we thought - we had to stop at the hotel again as Anna had forgotten a pullover - but it was a good occasion to use the pool again :-) Getting off the bikes was nevertheless a moment of celebration :-)

We are now back in Santiago and ready to spend the last evening before leaving the continent.Read more