I'd never been to a winery outside of Iowa. Sunday morning, Lindsay did a little research and discovered that from Vina del Mar back to Santiago we'd be going through an area with a bunch of wineries. She found one that looked good and was open on Sundays so we went. It was an awesome experience and also helped me make some intellectual connections.
1. We went to El Cuadro winery in the Casa Blanca valley between Santiago and the Pacific coast. The grounds are immaculate. Garv and Lindsay informed me that this is what the California wineries look like, too.
2. El Cuadro has the most awesome logo ever--a very early and Eastern version of the Greek god Dionysus parading around a bunch of wine. If I was in charge of a winery, this is the logo I would have selected!
And if I had to choose a wooden carving inside the entrance of a winery, this is the carving I would have selected!
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| With Dionysus--or at least an early version of Dionysus. |
And if I had to choose a wooden carving for inside the gift shop, this is the carving I would have selected!
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| With a satyr |
Dionysus was the Greek god of wine, wine making, and grape harvesting and he represented chaos, instinct, disorder, and ecstasy. He was celebrated during festivals that included parades, tragedy and comedy competitions, and drunkenness. I like the more feral and virile version of Dionysus (pre 600 BC; seen above) that the winery used much better than the effeminate and almost androgynous imagery that Classical Greek (600-300 BC) and Renaissance sculptors used (seen below). Satyrs, seen in these images, were little helpers of Dionysus and they were originally hyper-sexual as seen above. They would later take on the more human characteristics that is seen in the images of Dionysus.
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| A less animalistic and sexually evocative Dionysus and Satyr |
The main reason I was so excited about the Dionysus and satyr carvings is that I teach a lesson in which I contrast the characteristics of Dionysus--wine, chaos, etc--with those of Apollo. So I'll get to use some of these pictures in class! Apollo was the god of a lot of things--music, poetry, medicine, colonization, dance, and intellectual inquiry. Apollo, most importantly, represented order in contrast to Dionysian disorder. I like demonstrating the juxtaposition between these two Olympian gods in order to help students understand the sometimes confusing elements of human nature. How can someone who is can normally be completely logical and rational (like me, 99% of the time) become completely irrational (like me during Hawkeye sports)? We have all varieties of science and social science to explain this, but the Greeks (though extremely scientific for their time) did not. They had Apollo and Dionysus to explain why humans vacillated between orderliness and chaos.
3. Whoever purchased or commissioned the carvings for this winery has a great sense of humor. You might notice above that the satyr is in the gift shop with his hand out asking for money--very clever though I didn't fall for it. Also, there were pictures of Adam and Eve with wine--after eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, of course.
4. Oh yeah, the wine. It was excellent, especially the Sauvignon Blanc. Sauvignon Blanc is the only white that I like and this was one of the best I've ever had. I typically don't buy Sauvignon Blancs because it's too risky--they are either excellent or they taste like bad grapefruit juice spiked with vodka. Fortunately, El Cuadro's was top-notch. We also tried a Syrah, which was their signature wine. It was okay, but not that great. Garv talked the wine-tasting leader guy into trying a Cabernet Sauvignon which was much better than the Syrah. I bought a Sauvignon Blanc and a Carmenere which I will be bringing back. Garv bought a Carmenere and Cabernet Sauvignon which I don't know what he'll be doing with.
5. Please indulge me with this mini-essay: "Alcohol Tours as a Metaphor for Economic Eras" (Lindsay asked me why I was writing all of this so I told her: "It's my blog and I can write whatever the hell I want to.")
At the University of Iowa, the late Ken Cmiel, in the second half US history course, suggested that the history of Anheuser-Busch provided a great metaphor to explain the industrialization of the United States after the Civil War. Before railroads, beer had been produced locally because it was cumbersome, heavy, and likely to leak or spoil. The railroad changed all of that. Beer could be produced in one place and shipped to all parts of the country. It was able to become a large company that had the raw materials shipped to St. Louis via rail and then distributed the product across the United States. Anheuser-Busch, because of their product, production techniques, and distribution system, then built a national and international brand (Budweiser is usually the only American beer one can find outside North America).
It was one paragraph in a lecture, but for some reason it has stuck with me for nearly fifteen years. Reflecting upon it now, it could be the basis of a great lesson because it hits on the themes of industrialization, transportation, the rise of corporations, alcohol and temperance, and invention of brands. But bottom-line, mass-produced beer represents the industrial economy that dominated the US from 1865-2000 in which large corporations mass-produce goods, whether it's beer, pop, tv dinners, cars, vacuum cleaners, or curling irons.
Let's now think about various alcohol tours. I've been on four brewery tours or "experiences" as some of them have come to known: Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis; Boulevard in Kansas City; Guinness in Dublin; and Heineken in Amsterdam. I've also been to the Jack Daniels Distillery in Tennessee and the Jameson Distillery in Ireland. They're all very similar: brewing or distilling process, branding and advertisement, free beer(!) or whiskey, and move lots of people through the tour. It is all very industrial with the emphasis on creating a consistent product for the masses which is a perfect reflection of a factory-based economy.
Since 2000, the Western world lives in a post-industrial, information economy which is more service, information, and technology based; has a more de-centralized and less hierarchical command structure; and has increased employee autonomy. In this type of economy, the uniqueness of the employee--and by extension, the individual--is primary. As uniqueness becomes more important to one's identity, a person will seek out experiences that confirm that identity. In the world of alcohol experiences, this manifests itself in the form of microbrews and wineries.
The best example of the proliferation of microbrews is that within the last two years, two have started in Okoboji: West O Beer and Okoboji Brewing Country. Both brew their own beer on site, have several excellent selections, let you throw peanut shells on the floor, and have great little bars. They also offer private tastings and the such, but at places like this, the emphasis is on the uniqueness, rather than consistency, of the product. I really like both places and what is happening in Okoboji is happening across the country in that there is rapid increase and success of microbrews.
In the Casa Blanca Valley, a minor wine-producing region of Chile, where El Cuadro is located, there are thirteen wineries (or at least thirteen wineries that paid to get put on a map) that offer some sort of experience. I have no idea how successful the wineries, or at least the tourist part of them are, but the fact that there are so many speaks to the fact that their is a tremendous demand for the kind of experience employees in a post-industrial economy crave. Because of soil, terrain, seasonal tempatures, daily temperatures, precipitation, and many other factors, certain types of grapes grow better in certain places and results in wines particular to the winery. Every time I visit a winery, I'm always struck by the amount of knowledge necessary to understand wine. This makes it a drink very representative of the information age. Moreover, the central event at a winery is tasting the different types of wine where the unique characteristics of the wine are highlighted and then enjoyed.
The experience at a big brewery tour and a winery are drastically different (though both are fun) and represent different economic eras. Mass-produced beer and their accompanying brewery tours represents an economic era that emphasized industry and the mass production of goods for a conforming market. Wine and wineries and craft beers and microbrews, in contrast, characterized a post-industrial, information based economy in which uniqueness is more valued.
6. Back to the blog. So the winery tour was a major success. Eventually, I'll be rating my experiences, but the winery is definitely a contender for the top spot. The winery, the logo, the wine, the intellectualizing...that will be hard to beat.
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| Selfie in front of some vines |
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| Have I mentioned how awesome this carving is? |
Hey Mr. Klein
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