Escape the bustling streets of Santiago for a couple of hours of wine tasting among the vines on a bike and wine tour in the Maipo Valley wine region.
We really like wine. We also enjoy the occasional bike ride, especially when the path is mostly flat and the bike seat is user-friendly. While visiting Santiago recently, we discovered that we could combine the two on a bike and wine tour in the Maipo Valley, just a stone’s throw from the busy capital. Yes please!
I know what you’re thinking. Cycling and drinking? Surely a recipe for disaster. I’ll admit I had visions of myself, face flushed, swerving one-handed on a bike between the vines while holding a glass of Sauvignon Blanc aloft.
Rest assured. On this tour, there is cycling among vines, and there is drinking of wine – in moderation!
Chile’s wine industry was born in the Maipo Valley in the early 1540s, when Catholic missionaries accompanying the Spanish conquistadores planted vines to produce sacramental wine for mass.
Nearly 500 years later, Chilean wine is world renowned, and the Maipo Valley is one of the country’s premier wine producing regions.
Maipo also has the distinction of being an urban wine region. While the vineyards are in the foothills of the Andes mountains, Santiago’s city sprawl has expanded over the years to completely surround them.
It makes for a unique winery setting and one of the most accessible wine regions you’ll find, a mere 35 kilometres from the city centre.
We arrive at Maipo’s Cousiño Macul winery for our bike and wine tour at 11am to find our guide Sarah setting out our vineyard transport: bright green bicycles with – critically – comfy-looking seats. We’re off to an excellent start.
I’m even more pleased to find a small wine tasting glass in my bike basket, along with a bottle of water for the more sensible among us.
Sarah (who hails from the US but, having landed the kind of gig we would give our glass-raising arms for, has understandably taken up residence in Santiago), reaffirms that while we won’t be riding and sipping wine at the same time, we will be enjoying a cheeky, off-bike wine tasting out there among the vines.
After introductions to our fellow rider-tasters and some instructions on handling our bikes, we’re off to explore the vineyards.
At 160-years-old, Cousiño Macul is one of the oldest wineries in the Maipo Valley, and the only 19th-century winery in the country that remains completely in the hands of its founding family.
On this bike and wine tour, rider-tasters explore the winery’s Macul vineyards – one of three estates the family owns in the valley.
The property spans more than 150 hectares but once covered ten times that ground, before Santiago’s population boomed and the city began its creep towards the mountains.
That urban expansion, combined with Santiago’s valley location, has led to some serious smog issues for the city’s seven million inhabitants, making an escape to the vineyards on the city outskirts an even more attractive proposition.
We luck out on our visit with a beautiful sunny morning and unusually clear views of the Andes rising above the vineyards.
We pedal past plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Riesling and Chardonnay before pausing in the shade of a vast tree for a taste of our first wine, a light and very easy-drinking Rosé.
Over the next 45-minutes, we make several more stops among the vines so Sarah can share stories of the winery, its grapes and Chile’s viticultural past.
Back at the winery, we park up our bikes and head to the site’s modern wine-making facilities to learn about the grape to bottle journey of Cousiño Macul wines.
From there, it’s on to the winery’s 100-year-old underground cellars for a peek at the Cousiño family’s impressive personal wine collection.
The cellar is reached via a candlelit stairwell with a distinctly medieval feel. It’s a fitting approach to the vast, dust-covered treasury of bottles stored here, which is well protected from all but our covetous gaze behind a padlocked gate.
Around the corner, two vaulted tunnels filled with wine barrels stretch away into the distance.
All this vine and wine gazing has us well and truly ready for some more wine tasting.
Back on the surface, we settle around a small outdoor table for a lesson in how to see, swirl, smell and taste wine, to the tune of a rich, fruity Chardonnay, a Merlot bursting with berries, and a big, flavourful Cabernet Sauvignon – three delicious vintages from the vineyards we’ve just ridden through.
We take our time with the final drop. It’s tempting to lie in the sun here and drink wine for the rest of the day, but we’ve got another winery to visit.
Farewelling our new bike and wine tour buddies, we buy a bottle of the tasty Cab Sav from the cellar door in preparation for a more intensive session of seeing, swirling, smelling and tasting tonight.
We’re still sober enough to ride a bike too.
Good to know
Getting there
Doing a Santiago wine tour is easier than you might think. Maipo Valley is located within Santiago’s city limits. Cousiño Macul can be reached by taking the metro to Quilín station and then a taxi for the short ride to the winery.
Tour length and cost
The tour at Cousiño Macul, including the bike ride and tasting of four wines, is around 1.5 hours. It costs CLP 25,500 (appx. USD$30) for the regular tour and CLP37,500 (appx. USD$40) for the their premium tour.
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