The Vik Winery & Hotel Experience
Science and art are two elements clearly at play at the cutting-edge Vik Winery & Hotel in Chile – more science in the winery – more art in the hotel. Plenty of superlatives are needed to describe the Viña Vik hotel in Chile, more on that later.
Firstly the winery – impressive, massive and stunning are some of the words that come to mind when you see it and when you finally get to the other end of this huge building, the doors to the cellar open and WOW!
Alexander Vik is a .com entrepreneur who has invested millions in his design-oriented hotels in Uruguay and now his winery and hotel in Chile.
His winemaker Patrick Valette is determined to deliver on the owner´s promise to produce the best wine in South America, and considering they only started growing in 2006 they are going in the right direction with the wine already being rated in the top 10 of South America.
The range of technology on display is impressive, something you do not see every day is a US$ 800,000 scanner to detect grape condition and quality as they pass through the selection process, apparently there are less than 5 places in the world where such a machine is used, plus Vik uses humans both before and after this machine – he is not taking any chances with grape quality and is obviously determined to ensure superb grapes heading off to be fermented.
After stainless steel fermentation, Vik wine spends time in exclusively French oak, and these French barrels play host to just one vintage before being sold to other wineries. As you might expect this produces a very high-quality aging experience, and combined with the expert blending of many micro-terroir the results are superb. The icon of the winery is simply called VIK and is a blend of 5 varieties.
Now we move to the best bit! In the tasting room, your wines will be arranged on tables that display diagrams of the meticulous and scientific steps that the owner has taken to extract the best he can from the terroir on offer. After heavy research in several countries, Vik purchased 11,000 acres of land in the Millahue Valley and set his agronomists to work, taking 4000 soil samples to determine the type of micro-terroir that exists on each hillside, slope aspect and sunlight angle across his lands. Grapes are grown and blended according to very specific locations, as you have seen from the technical info link above very complex blends are produced from many different varieties and plot locations across the vineyard.
The tasting room really grabs your attention with the beautiful design and very informative style. The premium tasting, which we recommend to our clients, allows clients to taste the 7 different varieties grown on the property, plus the 3 resulting blends. You can see on the tasting table where the grapes have come from, plus other technical info can be provided by this tasting led by experts. This is a viticulture and viniculture science project, even the “rock garden” entrance area to the winery has water running over a semi-porous surface providing temperature and humidity control for the process. Nothing has been left to chance.
The hotel is quite literally a work of art. The titanium roof can be seen shimmering gold from miles away, and when you draw up to the place it looks like the Guggenheim. The staff is immaculate and very well-drilled, the common areas are filled with quirky art and lovely furniture, the infinity pool is lovely, spa, gym, restaurant etc…all top notch. But the real plus comes with the rooms, each one completely different from the rest and all designed by artists, some of them having to work at the property to complete their projects.
We have included a 360 drone video and a link to the hotel website below to get your juices flowing BUT remember you do not have to stay at the hotel to enjoy the experience. To be fair the hotel is very pricey and probably out of the range of many of our clients (and us) but we can take you there from Santa Cruz in the Colchagua Valley, where we have plenty of more moderately priced lodging options. In this way and you can enjoy the hotel and winery visit, plus an excellent lunch in combination with other winery visits in the area (see our suggested programs here) – just drop us an email and let us advise you.
