I just spent a week checking out the Wines of Chile in areas that are not far from Santiago. Part of the experience—which you can book yourself with a group or on the right wine tour—was a wine blending session at the Undurraga vineyard in Talagante, in the Maipo Valley.

After touring the facilities and learning a bit about Undurraga’s wines, its history, and social projects, we got down to business. First one of the winemakers presented one of their finished blends for us to taste. Then we set about tasting four varietals to figure out what we wanted in our own personal blend: Merlot, Cabernet Savignon, Syrah, and Chile’s own Carmenère. Sniffing, swirling, and taking notes, we each settled on a different combination.

We could test different combinations by using a sort of large plastic test tube that the winemakers use in their lab. If one is a little off, you can adjust the mix and try again.

Once you’re happy with the results, you then mix them for real in the proper proportions in a larger vessel and transfer the blend through a funnel into the bottle. For this exercise they had an old fashioned cork plugger on hand (after the more modern practice of putting in some elemental powder that would eliminate the oxygen in the top of the bottle).

I labeled mine “Sarah and Carmen Catch a Cab.” It’s 25% Syrah, 25% Carmenère, and 50% Cabernet. It’s a structured wine that should hold up to hearty food, but the blending grapes smooth out the tannins of the Cabernet.

I brought the bottle home and it’ll soon make it into some glasses. Will it impress my dinner guests? Time will tell.

See more here on visiting Viña Undurraga.

Shrimp gnocchi

This past week I’ve been touring some of Chile’s wine regions and had the pleasure of spending my first night at the lovely Hotel Aubrey in Santiago. This is a 20-room boutique hotel in a walkable nightlife district near the mountains and the gondola ride that will take you up for a good city view.

The restaurant at the Aubrey—Pasta E Vino—is a huge draw, to the point where you should make dinner reservations there when you make your hotel reservations. It’s that popular, especially on weekends. It’s a sister restaurant of one in Valparaíso, with the husband-chef managing one and the wife-chef managing the other.

The menu is modern Italian, with a dash of Chile and plenty of local seafood integrated into the gnocchi and ravioli selections. Naturally there is a terrific wine list with the cream of the crop from all over the country. Here are a few photos to give you a visual taste. For more see the restaurant page at the Aubrey’s website.

Scallop ravioli at Pasta E Vino

We’ve added two new and notable hotels to our reviews of luxury hotels in Uruguay, both run by the same company. Estacia Vik and Playa Vik are welcome additions to the beautiful coastal region of Uruguay, up the road from Punta del Este in José Ignacio.

This part of the coast is less crowded and you certainly won’t feel hemmed-in at Estancia Vik, which opened in 2009. The ranch hotel sits on 4,000 acres and you can ride horses, hike the hills, go canoeing, or catch a ride to the beach a few minutes away. There are only 12 guest rooms here, all decorated by a noted local artist, and the cuisine—with many ingredients coming from the working farm—is getting high marks. Read the full review of Estacia Vik.

Sister property Playa Vik opened this year and is even more dramatic, with bold lines and art work from the likes of Zaha Hadid and James Turrell. Once again, you won’t have to fight for a deck chair beside the infinity pool.

“The property’s six casas are divided into several sizes, ranging from two to three bedrooms in size. Each casa is distinct in layout and design, but the décor is consistently contemporary, and they all have a fireplace, original artwork and hand-painted floors.”

Read the full review of Playa Vik in Uruguay.

One thing magazine editors love to do is highlight some concept that’s been around for years and act like it’s a new trend they just discovered. Thus this May article in National Geographic Traveler about wine lodges in Mendoza, Argentina: Bodegas Open Their Doors.

After years of studying Spanish, I have found this word “bodega” to mean a lot of different things. When I lived in New York City, it meant a little corner food store run by Cubans or Puerto Ricans. In Colombia it’s a pantry. In other countries it’s a bar. The original meaning has something to do with storing barrels in a cellar though, so in Argentina this has led to the word being applied to most any winery. (Not a “guesthouse” as that article says.)

So this article is about places around Mendoza’s wine region where you can stay at the winery itself, or at least among the vines growing outside. Readers of Luxury Latin America know this is nothing new as we’ve featured detailed reviews of the two best wine lodges for years: Cavas Wine Lodge and Club Tapiz (the latter pictured here). Both can give you the opportunity to be smack up against the grape vines and you can set up tasting tours, pruning workshops, winery tours, or grape picking depending on the time of year.

We also have details on another one with only two rooms in this Boutique Hotels of Argentina story.

Whichever place you choose, you will have great views of the Andes range, you’ll eat well, and you’ll drink well. In the ones we highlight, you’ll get plenty of pampering as well and at Cavas Wine Lodge you can get all kinds of vinotherapy treatments—if soaking in wine and getting scrubbed with grape seeds is your kind of thing…

The Colomé Estancia Hotel, in an isolated location four hours from Salta or Cafayate, seems an unlikely place to house a notable museum dedicated to one artist. But the James Turrell Museum there is the real deal, built at the whim of the Swiss owner and vintner Donald Hess.

Last year, the dedicated art collector opened a dedicated 18,000-square-feet building devoted to the California artist’s works, known for their interplay of light and space, in a spectacular setting—mountains in the distance, surrounded by a vineyard. Some of the installations integrate the clear desert sky.

If you’re going to make the trek all the way out to Colomé Estancia, you will be rewarded: admission to the museum is free. But here at Argentina’s oldest winery, in a hotel that’s surprisingly plush for something so far from cities and supply routes, you’ll want to stick around for a while and take it all in.

You can see a slideshow of seven images from the museum at Wallpaper magazine’s site.