Beautiful! I am drinking a glass of (less expensive) Chilean wine right now. I can almost believe that I am back in the country!

-O-, how long before you would consider a return trip to Chile following the recent earthquake?

mountie...we would certainly consider returning to Chile later this year. Most of the serious damage (and unfortunate loss of life) was localized south of Santiago and north of the area where The Cliffs Preserve is located.

omegaet, my family and I are big fans of Casa Lapostolle wines and had the pleasure of staying at the residence in Casita Petit Verdot during our last visit to the winery at Clos Apalta. We delighted in our private tastings, the lovely meals and the extraordinary service. Did you visit or stay there?



Just in case you have not been receiving updates directly from Casa Lapostolle, here is the latest sent to us.


Lapostolle after earthquake in Chile

Dear Friends and colleagues:

After the earthquake that happened in the central south zone of Chile last 27th of February we want to inform that:

Most important, all Lapostolle team and their families are safe and well. Our Team has shown an extraordinary commitment with most enthusiasm and passion to restore the normality of our operations.

In Colchagua Valley and in Santa Cruz, we suffered the earthquake and its consequences, especially in our typical adobe constructions. Today, some Santa Cruz areas had water and electricity, but not in Apalta or Cunaco. We are operating with our own power generators in both wineries. Most shops are still closed but starting to reopen little by little. The roads are
connected to the north and south of the country.

We have our phone line and email working from yesterday.

Good news is that our Clos Apalta winery was spared and has no damage. We are working to connect back water to reopen our doors to visitors. We will reopen to visits from Monday 8th of March.

Lapostolle Residence has some minor damage, so we can offer lunches and dinners to our visitors as well.

The four casitas have experienced different levels of damage that we are assessing at the moment, so we cannot offer accommodation until further notice.

Our winery in Cunaco, has suffer different levels of damage in buildings, tanks, piping, barrels and bottles that we are still assessing.

- Barrels show images that are very shocking, but starting the counting the lost of wine and barrels is less than a 10% in reds and a 5% in Chardonnay. However this still needs to be confirmed. In terms of bottles, we will release this information as soon as it is available.

- The loss of wine has been accounted in tanks. The loss is mainly concentrated in bulk wine with a 20%.

Crushing machinery is in good condition and there are only 3% of wine tanks that we cannot use, so we are working to put the winery back in conditions to start the harvest as scheduled in about 10 days.

We want to sincerely thank you all for your concern and support in these difficult times for all here in Chile. We will update information in our web page www.lapostolle.com, in Facebook and Twitter.

Kapper.....thanks for the update on Casa Lapostolle.



I did go to their web site and see that they are posting daily updates as well.



No, we did not stay at the residences, but we did peek inside one of the casitas (don't recall which one). We considered staying at the vineyard for a night or two, but we had other places we wanted to see and only a few days remaining before we returned to the US.



The Casa Lapostolle staff were great...spent time with the assistant wine maker and most of the day with Diego Urra (pictured below). After touring the vineyards, the winery [that's Diego using a wine robber to give us a cask tasting of the 2007 Clos Apalta], the organic gardens (where we selected a variety of produce for our lunch....isn't that great to pick fresh vegetables and herbs and have the chef and kitchen staff prepare your very own selections for lunch)....we were escorted to the study on the third floor and tasted all of their wines.



We then had lunch and enjoyed the vistas across the vineyards with the Andes as a back drop. We were impressed with the results from the investments of money and knowledge the Marnier-Lapostolle family has made in this region.







It was a wonderful day at Casa Lapostolle and in the Colchagua Valley and Santa Cruz.

omegaet, you can be certain my family and I will be returning to Chile in the near future. Other than the immediate epicenter, I would consider another visit before the end of the year.



There are so many wonderful vineyards and lovely wines we don't even import into the US.

omegaet, can you believe it? The new president of Chile was being sworn into office and two more after quakes occurred. Wow, what a mess.

omegaet,



How fun--you, o, drinking out of the Riedel O series!



What a great idea as well--a commercial donation! It certainly moved me to include a bottle of carmenere when we bought wine a few nights ago.



efg

efg, I'll be darn. I totally missed the "O" connection in the originalposting. Wonder if omegaet intended to hide a little clue to see if anyone was really paying attention to his blog?

kapper and omegaet...ordered a glass of a chilean cabernet at dinner last thursday...it was the spiciest cabernet i've ever had...it was very good and went well with our deep dish pizza...i've been wondering why the name seemed familiar...it's because it was from casa lapostolle which i'd obviously heard aboutfirst here!

Hey, efg, glad you had some Casa Lapostolle Cabernet...remember the year?



We tasted some 2008 and had some 2006 with lunch at the vineyard. Their cabs go great with pizza, steaks and spicy foods....strong enough to not get lost in mix, yet still pleasant to sip along.



Good catch on the Reidel "O" glass. Actually, I use the "O" tumblers frequently with reds (don't mind or notice any heat transfer from my hand to the wine)....the design is a redo of the classic tumbler often used throughout Europe for table wines.

omegaet, what do you hear from your friends in Chile? Do they indicate tourism has experienced a drop since the earthquake?

Hey kapper, we just received an email a few days ago from Chile and there are still many problems to be resolved....probably years to get the region around Conception back in order.



Our friend is in the tourism business and indicated they have experienced a reduction in visitors. Apparently, several of the cruise lines have altered their South American stops and are now bypassing Valpo.



Just going to take time. I guess the best thing we can do is keep drinking wine from Chile!

-O-, what do you hear from your friends/contacts in the wine business in Chile? Are things getting back to normal?

Hi J. I am going to jump in here. I am planning to go back to Chile in March. Most places are getting back to normal. There is a wine train that is currently not operating but planning to begin in the beginning of the year. Many of the properties we have contacted in the Valparaiso area are operating normally and offering trips to the wine regions of the Casablanca Valley. Another wine region in the Santa Cruz area is popping back. The properties I have contacted are open. The people that I have contacted would like the word out that Chile is up and running and looking forward to visitors!!

bonniejoy03, thank you for the update. Are you planning to do one of the wine areas in Chile on the next trip? If so, where?

I think we might visit the Casablanca wine region. This area is closer to Valparaiso and Santiago. Sounds like a fun day trip to Valpo.....

Recently, at a patio barbeque, we didn't have a wine opener handy (although we could walked into the house and picked up one), so we decided to try this:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHTAD...1&feature=fvwp



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAx2T...eature=related


....good news, we used a modified approach and opened the bottle without any damage.

Oh that is good!! Thanks for sharing! (but I will stay with a corkscrew!)

-O-, thanks for posting both versions of this different approach to opening wine.



I would hate to find the need to get totally sloshed, as in the case of the guy in Paris, just to open a bottle of wine, so I guess I would look for a tree for assistance.



I am not so sure I want to do this myself, but I will share it with some of my friends and they will likely attempt it.