Wine, Tweet, Love: Tour Guide for wine route needed

Wine, Tweet, Love: Tour Guide for wine route needed: One of the best characteristics about Chile is that is a long country with a big depression just in the middle of the territory, where you ...

Tour Guide for wine route needed

One of the best characteristics about Chile is that is a long country with a big depression just in the middle of the territory, where you can find the major concentration of vineyards of the country. We call this natural depression between Andes Mountain and Coastal mountain range, Central Valley or Valle Central.

Chilean had been producing wines in “Central Valley” for more than 500 years, mainly red robust wines, full of tannins and strong in alcohol. This tradition suffered a big impact when at the beginning of the 1980's a group of young Chilean winemakers try to get aboard international markets, with the production of red wines. First approaches were not so good, but Chilean wines were defined with a good potential.

This starting point contributed to create a great revolution in the wine industry in Chile, so big that even those very quiet and traditional vineyards, with old casonas made of adobe, tiles roofs, corridors and pleasant parks  suffered an incredible transformation to welcome buyers, distributors, international wine dealers, wine journalist and tourists.

In places like Santa Cruz, in the heart of Colchagua Valley, where before the “wine revolution” a Monday can be considered as quiet and calm as a Sunday, things really changed dramatically. The wine revolution changed for ever the face of those small and tranquil  towns, and incredibly this particular revolution also affected my life.

I came from a family strongly related to the Central Valley. My grandfather was born in Lontue, a small village to the south of Curico, located close to one of the first places in Chile were a vine was cultivated. Most of my childhood I lived in a vineyard, experienced the circle of the vines, the evolution of the grapes and the harvest seasons.

No matter of that, I  turned to  different topics when  growing up.  I went to University to study for being an English Teacher, but I never completed my degree. Incidentally, my first job on my journey  back to the vineyards was like a Tour Guide for the brand new Maule Wine Route in the year 2004

.

My main strength for that job was not my great deal of knowledge of wine processes. To be honest, I did not realised that such knowledge was part of my background at the time. Maule valley wine route contacted me, because they needed someone able to speak English. Wine knowledge was not a "must" a day before a group of 10 “gringos” arrived for a tour.

I hardly remember what happened, the first time ever, I got a group of foreigners visiting Maule Wine route, but should had been a good experience for the tourists because the Route decided to contract me for the season.

Suddenly, I went back to my origins, rediscovering that I belonged to a vineyard. I began to enjoy the job and felt delighted with the opportunity to show to visitors the valley where I was born.

I worked as guide of Maule Valley Wine route for almost every summer season from 2004 till 2009. I passed throughout too many administrations and managers of the route, too many different experts, connoisseurs and winemakers. I also had the honour of working as the Tour Coordinator for the route between 2007-2008. But in between I also worked as guide for the Colchagua Valley Wine route and the very well known Wine Train or “Tren del Vino del Valle de Colchagua” and my experience in that route, gave me a lot of material, anecdotes, facts and ideas to write a book or a least, a blog.

I'm not an expert in wines, I just enjoy wines, but there are some chapters of this particular world of the Chilean wines, that was not made from the point of view of another prestigious winemaker, not from the corner of investors and owners of vineyards, not from the need to full fill a wall with international prizes and medals.

There are many stories in the fact that after the revolution of the wine industry in Chile, there was a great transformation in very enclosed vineyards, full of traditional ways of creating wines, keeping the secret as hidden as possible. This places needed to start opening the iron gates of the entrance to let tourists to discover them. So that, after the winemaker, the agronomist, the manager, the pickers, the secretaries and different staff, appeared in a vineyard a new charge to fill, it was the Tour Guide. That was my place in this industry, and my personal perspective of the world of wine in Chile. 

Lady Gaga's wine and tweets

I could attract more attention and more social media wine enthusiastic if I write this post in English, but English is not my first language, not even my second one. I speak in Chileno and then Spanish or more precisely Castellano. My other language is about wine, or a language closely related to the vines in Maule Valley.

There is a great deal of snobbery, specialised commentators, wineblogger's and wine experts everywhere, but I'm not sure how many of them are just “intellectuals of the vine” writing from a very comfy office in an international publication, or how many of those had got the chance to taste dust and sun of harvest time.

I know that there are many wine connoisseurs as strains of vines in the world, so many bloody experts as bottles of wines per year. But at the end of the day the only voice is the wine, and the different ways to get new markets.

Yesterday, @alawine made me think about Lady Gaga in the world of wine. What can be more opposite than the pop start and a bottle of wine? Perhaps the vision of the very baroque artist's name in a vintage wine on an oak barrel is not an expected twist for the next London Wine Fair, but we should recognise that as crazy as it sounds, also looks very creative mixture.

I think that “GAGA Wines” should have a very good chance with a full bodied wine, a little rough but definitely inspired and hallucinogenic.

I would like to buy a bottle designed by her, with a diamond imitation cork, in a psychedelic label with the double G in Ruby red sparkling trace. This should be a very desirable product for marketing campaigners and should help to stop the head scratching of the industry for a while. Lady Gaga would have the honour to revitalise wine as a product for young people, a segment that is not naturally inclined to drink wine.

One of the main tasks in wine industry is to attract youngsters. Tradition is not a bad thing, but for certain Lady Gaga sounds more appealing than an old family name, that has been producing wines from biblical times.

Let's say it, Lady Gaga can help more to impact and develop a new market segment, than traditional ideas of the world of wine. We need a winery keen to take the risk and a serious talk with Lady Gaga's agent to make a deal. There are many chances of new products in the wine industry, coming from very unorthodox sources. Innovation is not necessary to be put on the product itself as in the intention to get a quite unique product, full of character and thought for new markets. It is very hard to teach a new trick to an old dog, but when you have defined a product as weird as "GAGA Wines" for certain you don't go to the "usual suspects". You try to apply all that new marketing strategies from those webinar about how to make profitable your tweets, and how to create an audience on Facebook for starting promoting of a new concept, a new way of drinking wine.

On the other hand, in any place where  a vine grows, and people are  concerned about the new harvest season, we should continue tasting dust, having the sun as our witness, that to produce a good wine it is just the first step, in the long journey to bring it to market.