Events

VINART Chile 2011

The first VINART 2011 exhibition will be held in Santiago, Chile during the month of May.
The public will be able to appreciate and observe local artists in the live process of painting oak barrels during the entire week.

The art pieces will subsequently be exhibited along with the respective reviews of the artists who took part in the intervention. The exhibition will be organized by a team of designers and curators of the CIAN Cultural Platform.

The objective of the initiative is to create a direct link between art and the corporate image of the vineyards, drawing high symbolic value from art, associated with innovation and style, while seeking to promote the country image component associated with the vineyards.

Viña Casa Marín takes part in the event with a mosaic-covered oak barrel made by Patricia Marin. The design and style symbolize the Casa Marín vision and the work is also representative of mosaic art displays found in the winery and throughout the town of Lo Abarca. The oak barrel display is open to the public from the 20th to the 30th of May, at Patio Bellavista.

For more information about the event please visit: http://vinartchile.wordpress.com/

Photos of VINART 2011

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Vinos de Proa – Santo Domingo

After the success of last year’s “street tasting” in the seaside town of Santo Domingo, located in the San Antonio Valley, the vineyards of the San Antonio Leyda Valley got together again at “Plaza del Ollo”. Only the pioneers of the San Antonio valley were present: Viña Chocalán with their line “Malvilla”, Amayna, Viña Leyda, and Viña Casa Marin.

Vinos de Proa was inaugurated with a food pairing and tasting class of 8 different wines from the vineyards that were present. Pascual Ibañez, sommelier, wine writer and wine critic from Chile, introduced each wine to the public and explained the aromas and how each plates pairs well con each wine. For a change, we brought our Sauvignon Gris to the tasting, rated with 10 out of 10 points during this tasting.

I would say that Vinos de Proa has been more successful than last year. It is one of the best wine events that we attend in Chile. High quality wine, good ambience and nice public. The public was stunned by our Sauvignon Gris, this wine was definitely the star of the evening!

Celebration of our 10th years anniversary

2010 has been a year of many contradictions. It has been 200 years since Chile became an independent republic, so 2010 was the year of Chile´s Bicentennial. But the year started a little bit less cheerful. On February 27, Chile awakened by one of the strongest earthquakes in history. Then in August, September and October, the world was focused on the amazing rescue of the mineworkers who were trapped in a collapsed mine for more than 60 days! Yes, in their bicentennial, Chile was frequently on the international news!

Also for Casa Marin 2010 was a year of many contradictions. Although it was the year of our 10th year anniversary, we started the year with heavy frosts resulting in the loss of 6 hectares of grapes (from the 40 hectares in total this is quite a lot!). Although the production was consideraly less than 2009, the quality of the grapes was incredible.

And then, there were all the amazing awards we have won during 2010. We started off with the Regional Trophy in Decanter Magazine. And then we won the Special Trophy in the first “Concours Mundial du Sauvignon” in Bordeaux, Casa Marin Sauvignon Blanc Cipreses 2009, Best Sauvignon Blanc in the world above 12 Euro!. After that, in September we were invited to the International Decanter World Wine Awards in London. On the first of September we received in London the International Trophy: Casa Marin Sauvignon Blanc Cipreses 2009: Best Sauvignon Blanc in the World abpve 10 pounds!.

Furthermore, Maria Luz Marin was chosen as one of the most successful women of the bicentennial and her son, and winemaker of Casa Marin, Felipe Marin, was chosen among the 100 young leaders of Chile 2010. Like mother, like son! And to finish this amazing year, we were chosen by Wines of Chile (the Association of Chilean Wines), as “Winery of the year 2010”, in recognition of the extraordinary contribution to the Chilean wine industry in Chile and abroad.

So, as you can understand we had a lot of reasons to celebrate this special year. On the 6th of January we had a lovely seafood barbecue and tasted the wines of 2010 with our closest friends from the wine industry. We would like to thank Ivan from Vinea, our Brazilian importer who travelled from Brazil to join us on this special day, as well as Cees van Casteren, wine journalist from the Netherlands, our national distributor Desa and their team. And of course special thanks goes to Patricio Tapia, Hector Riquelme and Pascual Ibañez for celebrating with us and sharing their comments on our new 2010 vintages!

Winemaker Dinner Medio Mundo – Algarrobo

On the 23rd of July we had our first winemaker dinner in Litoral de Los Poetas. Cornelius Greyling, owner and founder of Hotel & Restaurant Medio Mundo invited us for a delicious winemaker dinner

With a small group of 20 people we tasted the best plates of Medio Mundo combined with the wines of Casa Marin. We started with a delicious Cebiche de Corvina & Machas which was paired with our Cartagena Sauvignon Blanc 2009.

After the cebiche we continued with a Leek Creme Soup paired with our Riesling. Before every plate, Felipe told a short story about the wine, where it comes from and its main characteristics and secrets.

The main plate was a delicious Conger Eel prepared in an Asian Style. An excellent plate to enjoy with our Sauvignon Blanc Cipreses. And finally we finished this succesfull night with a Terrine of Chestnuts and Chocolate served with a caramel sauce prepared with Port and blueberries.

Harvest Festival San Antonio-Leyda

The five vineyards of the San Antonio Leyda – Valley gathered together for the second time in history to celebrate their harvest season. This year the five vineyards decided to donate the income from the festival to the elderly shelter in Lo Zarate, where because of the earthquake 26 “abuelitos” or ‘grandmas ‘and ‘grandpas ‘ lost their shelter as a result of the earthquake that took place in February this year.

The participating vineyards, Leyda, Garces Silva, Matetic, Chocalan and Casa Marín hosted an enthusiastic public who could taste the best vintages of the premium cool climate wines of the San Antonio-Leyda Valley, meanwhile enjoying a beautiful sunny day with music, dancing, local gastronomy, spectacular goat cheese and impressive local handicrafts.

I would like to give my compliments to the organization of this Festival, especially to Mercedes Somalo, event producer, and Osvaldo Marín, for the negotiation with the government in order to obtain the funds necessary to realize this event!

Besides the wines, many local artists were showing their handmade products. One of them was Magali from Artes Melo. Together with her husband she makes beautiful mini-sculptures out of stone with a historical and indigenous meaning. Rosa Guerra was presenting her jewelries from the Mapuches (the Chilean Indians) and also Mosaicos Lo Abarca was again present, represented by Christina Cornejo and Sara Merchants, who participated two years ago in one of the mosaic workshops of Patricia Marín. Today they are making and selling their own Mosaic arts and are helping to maintain the image of Lo Abarca as a Mosaic village. I bought a beautiful Cactus from Amelia, Lo Abarca’s own cactus producer who had before the earthquake more than 5000 different cactuses, now she is trying to recover the damage. Did you know that cactus give you positive energy? There is a very interesting story behind the cactus in general, I will ask Amelia if she wants to tell us more about this later!

In conclusion, it was lovely to see how the local producers and artists presented with proud their products to the visitors! I have to say that the most impressive exposition was the one of Roberto Pizarro Lemarchant. With his beautiful sculptures made out of wood: “El viento del Pacifico”, “the wind from the Pacific”. This amazing exposition represent the wind that created the region of San Antonio, it represents the beauty of woman, poetry and wines.

During lunch we enjoyed the local gastronomy with the famous pork ribs of El Sauce, and according to Maria Luz Marín, with the best Ceviche of the region from the Restaurant Medio Mundo in Algorrobo.

For the second time it was a great success, up to the next harvest festival 2011!

Aase Jacobsen

It was an honor to receive Aase Jacobsen, Norwegian wine critic and wine writer for the magazine ‘Apéritif’. From the wines she tasted, Syrah was one of her favourites. Thank you for visiting us!

Maria Luz Marín, me and Aase Jacobsen

MyC Rusia – Moscow

On the 25th of March, for the first time, we participated in the ProChile wine tasting “Muestras y Catas” in Moscow. During the year, Pro Chile organizes several “Muestras y Catas” all over the world with as main objective to help the Chilean wineries to develop new markets. Maria Luz and her partner will be representing our wines in the next MyC in Asia, direct after Vinexpo Hong Kong and Expo Shanghai, were they will represent the wines in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Unfortunately we did not have the possibility to go to Moscow, therefore, our wines were presented by our representative Andrés Kuznar. Our main goal of participating in MyC Moscow was to find an importer in order to get our wines in the Russian market.

According to the data of Pro Chile, around 500 people visited the event; mainly professionals from the wine business. “The white wines of Casa Marín impressed a lot of people, especially the Sauvignon Blanc Laurel 2009. It was very common to hear that this wine was far most the best white wine that was presented at the event”, commented Andrés. Also the Casa Marín and Cartagena Pinot Noir were very well received. During the tasting many professionals had shown their interest for our wines. The Riesling and Gewurztraminer provoked a lot of curiosity among the visitors as they are German varieties created on Chilean soils. In general the people were surprised with the characteristics of the Casa Marín wines, something completely different than they would expect from Chile.

This is especially interesting as we are always fighting against the image that the Chilean wines have in the world of wines: “Bueno y Barato” or “Good value wines”. Nowadays, many Chilean wineries are producing excellent wines, from special terroirs. Chile is such a long country with many different climates which makes it possible to produce excellent wines with personality. Today, the Chilean winemakers are realizing this more and more, and are exploring Chile from the dessert to the forests, from the Ocean into the Andes, in order to discover new places to make great fine wines.

Cuasimodo Lo Abarca

This religious festival is dating back from the colonial period, remained in the town of Lo Abarca with its traditional characteristics. The festival is held every Easter Sunday, one week earlier than the other religious festivals of Cuasimodo held elsewhere in the country. It was the Reverend Monsignor Ivan Larrain Eyzaguirre, who put his soul and strength in this place. He passed away on February 11, 1985, and is buried in the little town of Lo Abarca. Today he is remembered as the brightness spirit who initiated this beautiful colonial festival.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It is during this ceremony where the priest of Lo Abarca stops by the houses where the people are sick and ill to bless them. He does this in a beautiful antique carriage pulled forward by horses and accompanied by more than hundred “huasos”, Chilean Cowboys, who are during this festival, named “Quasimodistas”. The Quasimodistas are dressed in beautiful traditional costumes and they are wearing special hats.

At 8 o’clock in the morning they depart from Lo Zarate, heading towards Lo Abarca, a distance of about two kilometers. Then, they head to San Sebastian, a small coastal town, to perform the same service and care for the sick. From there they take the road back to Lo Abarca. After crossing a painful hill, they reach the main square of Lo Abarca. Dust is kicked up by the caravan of those many Quasimodistas that are passing with full speed through the streets of Lo Abarca, accompanying the priest back to Lo Abarca.

In front of the Church an altar is waiting for the final ceremony, which is led by the priest and vicar of Melipilla participates, Mr. Ignacio Vio Jorquera, who speaks faithfully to the crowd that they have to follow the Christian principles and maintain the tradition and prestige of the area of Lo Abarca. The ceremony is concluded with the Quasimodistas running their final laps around the square and with burning down Judas.

I always wondered why so many horses were accompanying the priest to the houses of the sick people. It is said that this gave rise to the term “Running to the Christ”! By speeding up the caravan with the horses, the Priest was protected against the old time bandits and potential attackers who claimed to steal the gold goblets that were carried by the horses and were used for the communion of the patients that the priests was visiting.

It is this beautiful festival, which shows the tradition of Lo Abarca, the love and pride of the Chileans for their country! Cuasimodo made us forget for a moment all the problems after the earthquake of the 27th of February. It changes our fear for our own country again into national proud and joy.

Harvest Festival – San Antonio-Leyda Valley

Cheers to life! – Help the “Abuelitos” of the elderly shelter in Lo Zarate

On Saturday, 17th of April 2010, the wineries of San Antonio and Leyda valley will get together to celebrate their harvest of 2010! The first harvest festival of the San Antonio and Leyda valley was held in 2009 in Vina Casa Marín, this year we will celebrate our harvest in Matetic Vineyard.

The festival will be different than last year. Many valleys in the south of Chile are not able to celebrate their harvest due to the earthquake that took place on the 27th of February, which registered 8.8 on the Scale of Richter. Many vineyards were destroyed and the Chilean wine industry lost 125 millions of liters of wine which is equal to 250 million dollar. In total 200.000 houses got completely destroyed in Chile and the damage is estimated at 4.000 million dollar. The San Antonio Valley is one of the less affected wine valleys but still people lost their houses, schools fell down and people died. Most of the help goes to the most affected areas in the south and does not reach San Antonio.

Therefore, we decided to donate the sales of the entrance tickets and wines to the shelter house for elderly people in Lo Zarate (the neighbor village of Lo Abarca). In this shelter house are living 26 elderly people, poor people, guided by one old nun. After the earthquake fifty percent of the shelter got destroyed and the elderly people are living in emergency houses at this moment. The church is in charge of the shelter but as the old nun is the only person responsible for the church, there are no financial resources available to rebuild the facilities. Therefore, the vineyards of the San Antonio and Leyda valley decided to help to rebuild this elderly shelter so the 26 “abuelos” can live in peace again.