Nate and a sommelier named Diego taste Chilean wines at a market in Puerto Natales. Diego walks through how to taste wine properly, explains Pinot Noir and Carmenère, and shows an acidity test while working toward his WSET certification.
March 4, 2017
Richie
1994
Cheers.
So it's been raining all day. We were supposed to be trekking in the French valley today, but thankfully we checked the weather. This is Richie. He is the owner of Chili Tour who's been hosting us for the past couple of days. He's been taking care of us today while it's been raining, cooking us some delicious food. So we thought we were just taking the day off today, but he's offered to take us to one of his favorite spots in town. Where are you taking us?
Wine and market. It's a new place here in Puerto Natales and I'm always excited every time I hear about wine or I wanted, you know, like do wine tasting. So I hope you like it.
Let's go.
Hola.
So welcome to Market Patagonia.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We've only been here for about five minutes and it's already the coolest place ever. It's basically a market of all things Chilean. So they bring things from all over the country here. And it's all super, super delicious looking. So this is the wine cellar, but it's not like your average wine cellar. Instead of everything being organized by the type of wine, it's like by which valley the wine was made in. So this is all the northern wines and then it goes all the way around to the southern wines because they're just spread out all over the country.
There's all the different valleys where the wine comes from and we are here.
So welcome, guys. My name is Diego. I'm going to be in charge of this wine flight. We're gonna, we're gonna start from here. We're gonna go increasing strength, flavor, so almost everything till the. The bowl reds. We're gonna do it step by step. We're gonna start with the visual part. Okay. And we're gonna see, we look at it. Color. We look at it exactly.
Yeah.
Then we are, we are gonna move to the nose. So we're gonna start smelling the wine. We're gonna have some different notes and then we're gonna try it so we can, we can see the color. It's really, it's really pale. First of all, this, you shouldn't do it at first.
Move it gently. I'm gonna just get the first notes. Mostly they're gonna be fruity notes at first. And then when you got that, you can start moving. So you're gonna have something happening here. And then you have a second layer, flavors.
This is the most official and detailed tasting we've ever done. I've been doing it wrong my whole Life.
My whole wine drinking life, I just picked up the glass and started spinning it. And you're not supposed to do that.
So. Yeah, let's talk about this one. It is. Okay. This is Pinot Noir. So. So north of Santiago. And these are the Andes. Right. So we have beautiful reds here, like bold reds. It is also called the white wine of the red wines.
The white wine of the red wines.
And the other thing, it's also called the headache of the winemakers.
The headache, yeah.
Because Pinot Noir is really difficult to grow, to work with. Meaning that. Exactly. So to everything, like cold temperatures, wind, drought, everything, everything is affecting this grape. First of all, let's see the color. It's a beautiful color. It's really shiny. It's a red color. It's lighter than the other reds we have here.
It's kind of Burgundy.
Yeah.
Yes.
Actually, Pinot Noir comes from a region.
In France called Burgundy.
Burgundy.
Carmener. Have you heard of this grape?
I only heard of it once I came to Chile. I'd never heard of it before.
Yeah.
Because Chile produces about 98% of this grape. When we started making wine in Chile, we brought the vines from France. That's why most of our wines are French grapes. So we brought them all. Something like 200 years ago, we brought them all from France, we started making wine here.
So we brought this guy, Carmen. Er, the thing is, we didn't know that. We did. We brought it, but it was mixed with an old grape with Merlot. Okay. And then we discovered this grape here in our fields in 1994.
So on our Spain wine tour, we learned about the acidity of the different wines. But I'm still a little confused about it, so I thought I would ask Diego. We're getting really deep in the details of wine tasting. I feel like the more I know, the more confused I am.
Me too.
But we're learning a lot. First, I'm gonna do this water test. It's gonna be a little gross.
So.
Okay. I think it was 10 seconds lemon water.
Like, less than a second.
That was about three seconds.
That's perfect.
Really?
Yeah.
So you can say that that wine has a medium, medium plus too high acidity, but the water took something like 10 seconds. Right. This is neutral. I mean, the acidity is not there.
Yeah. Fascinating.
Awesome, right? Yeah.
This has been the most I've ever learned about wine in the last half hour.
I hope you enjoyed our best efforts at making a wine documentary. Like, our favorite documentary of all times on Netflix is Psalms S O M M S Like, if you enjoyed this at all, soms will completely blow your mind.
My favorite part about this is how nice. Diego, our sommelier that was working tonight was. He answered all of our questions. All the things that I wondered when I was watching the psalms documentary. I got to ask. It was awesome. And we've done a few other wine tours, but I feel like we learned the most here because we just got to sit there and pick his brain. We even got to look at a textbook for a little while.
He's, like, studying to work his way up in the levels of Somali. What are you studying for?
To be a certified wine educator. Wset is the entity so advanced level.
It's a lot of studying and a really hard test.
If you find yourself in Puerto Natales, come have a wine tasting at the end of the world.
You have to. Thank you so much.
Thanks to you.
This was so much fun.
That's also.
I saw it on the documentary.
Want some more agony?
Is there a strategy? Is there, like, a certain way you.
You know, actually do it? I do it all the time, and I don't know how to explain it. They asked me yesterday.
I feel like you need to do it.
Show me.
And then you spit it out.
So you, like, swished it around your whole mouth.
Yep. So all your tongue gets all the flavors. School.
I'm learning a new skill, how to aerate it.
