Wine and Pisco in Ica
We spent an afternoon doing the wine thing in Ica. If there’s one thing you need to learn fast, is that Peruvian wine is sweet and not for the American or European palette. At least not mine. I like my reds dry, but that won’t stop me from doing some wine touring.
We visited a big winery that also distilled Pisco (made from grapes but tastes like strong rum to me) and saw their equipment and processes. We had about 5 tastes, including a shot of Pisco that burned my throat. After that, our taxi driver took us to a chocolate factory (Helena’s) where there was no tour, but a big window to watch the workers do their thing. I was excited for a big bar of dark chocolate. No such luck. They did have lots of chocotejas (like truffles).
After the chocolate fix, we visited an artesanal winery where they still stomp on the grapes barefoot and pick the grapes by hand. They also had a Pisco distiller, but instead of copper tubing and crazy containers, they had a big cement basin, tubes and a giant fire to do that sublimation thing for Pisco making. We were hungry for lunch, but we decided to do the tastings and tour while waiting for our food to be prepared. I don’t know exactly how many tastes we had, maybe 10? We tried 3 different kinds of Pisco (and I couldn’t finish my tasting cups) a red wine, a white wine, and a kahlua style liquor that was made of pisco (of course) milk and fig puree. The last one was really tasty, like melted ice cream. They gave us a taste of mango juice, cebada, chicha morada and some jams and chocolates. There was no entrance fee (but the lunch was overpriced) but it was a much better tour (and tasting) than the industrial winery. We learned all about quality of Pisco and how they taste different if a different grape is used (one burned the back of my throat, the other burned the roof of my mouth). All in all it was a fun day and we got to spend it with friends, which made it even better.