In Santiago, the Vinolia wine-tasting experience aims to change perceptions of Chilean wines.
The Vinolia tasting room
All cinemas should be like this. Sitting through the latest live action Disney remake, or the year’s 29th comic book movie, would be considerably improved with five generously-filled wine glasses in front of you.
The tasting room at Vinolia in Santiago is quite unlike any other you’ll find in the wine regions outside the capital. It looks like a high-end lecture theatre, with desks staggered at different levels so everyone gets a good view of the screen in front. The idea is that the tasting is conducted with the winemakers and winery owners in Chile’s most renowned viticultural valleys. They talk you through it on the big screen, accompanied by sweeping scenic shots of the vineyards, and you sample their wines as they ramble on.
Testing the sense of smell
First up, though, it’s important to get the senses working. On a series of tables are unmarked containers with metal stoppers. The task is to pull the stopper out, smell it, and work out what the aroma is. Most of these are will later be encountered when putting the wines through the old sniff test, but the difference here is that there are clear right and wrong answers.
It therefore gets both incredibly competitive – an air punch and a “YES!” when correctly identifying peach or eucalyptus – and laughably embarrassing when wrong. Going for cloves when it’s actually banana, or suggesting honey might be coffee, is a one-way ticket to a richly deserved ribbing.
Changing views of Chilean wines
But this shambling amateurishness is not replicated in the main event. The Vinolia experience is incredibly slick, with the film having almost unnecessarily high production values. Part of the idea is to change the perception of Chilean wines – which are best known as affordable supermarket drops, but have real quality and variety when explored in the homeland.
The wines of the Colchagua Valley
The evening presentation concentrates on the Colchagua Valley, which stretches from the Andean foothills to within a short hop of the Pacific Ocean. As the five on-screen winemakers explain, this leads to a tremendous range. The first wine – a fresh, fruity chardonnay fermented in steel tanks by the Los Vascos winery – benefits from the coastal breezes. But later on, the French-style, biodynamic Cuvée Alexandre syrah from Lapostolle gets its character from the high altitude and steep slopes.
What makes Vinolia different
By using the winemakers and CEOs, Vinolia manages to add an extra level from the usual cellar door wine-tasting experience. There are still the usual flavour notes to look out for (cherries and strawberries in the Malbec), and food pairing recommendations (the Malbec with a roast lamb). But there’s an additional sense of passion and vision. One winemaker talks about his creation being “almost an erotic wine”. Another tells that his aim is to preserve the purity of the fruit flavour from vineyard to glass.
It’s slick, informative and – crucially – tasty. Fans of buttery chardonnays get won round to light, perky incarnations. Merlot haters reassess their position. And those who think syrah can only be big and beefy get a more complex take on it.
The risk for something this glossily produced is that it can end up being horribly earnest and pretentious, but any risk of that is pierced by the outtakes reel at the end of the film. As the remnants of the glasses are polished off, the winemakers show a human side, roaring with laughter at their inability to nail the script or open bottles with swift panache.
The cinema meets cellar door concept may be a new way of introducing wine, but a lot of work has gone into making it velvety smooth…
Vinolia prices and booking
The Colchagua Valley wine tasting experience at Vinolia costs 24,990 pesos, or 64,990 pesos including dinner. Bookings can be made online.
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