Tour review: Casas del Bosque
August 13, 2015
Casas del Bosque is well set up for tourism. There is a restaurant, shop, two outdoor seating areas, one of them a bar area beside the vines. There are bicycles available, or you can just do a tasting or go for a picnic. They clearly work at coming up with seasonal attractions, for instance you can pick grapes at harvest time. I was there during the Copa América football championship and they had organized events on that theme.
I didn’t try the restaurant, but it was busy on a weekday in winter, which is a pretty good indicator.
We had an efficient guide and the group was just enough with around 12 people.
Overall score 7 / 10.
Details
| Cost | $16,500 Chilean pesos for Premium tour (other options available) |
| Ease of booking | Good. Booked by form on the website. They responded by email within a couple of hours. |
| Information prior to arrival | No prices on the internet but they did send a brief description of tours and prices by email. The website has a reasonable level of information. |
| Getting there | Easy. I took a taxi from the centre of Casablanca, which cost $2,000 pesos. The same taxi driver came to pick me up when I was ready. For anyone driving, the winery is signposted from Casablanca centre. |
| Welcome on arrival | Good. |
| Efficiency | Good |
| Toilets | Spotless. |
| Café / restaurant | Didn’t stay to eat but the restaurant was busy. |
| Shop | Very well stocked with wine and good quality wine accessories and souvenirs. Quite pricey. |
| Languages available | English and Spanish |
| Brief description of tour | Short but quite interesting. The guide was pleasant, gave a good introduction and offered to take photos for anyone who wished. We saw some vines, had a brief tour of the plant and a few minutes in the cellar among the barrels. Some noisy cleaning work was going on in the plant, which made it difficult to hear, but otherwise it was all easy to follow. |
| Tour guide’s ability to answer questions | The guide was good at responding to queries about the growing and winemaking process but not so strong on the winetasting and she misunderstood a couple of questions. |
| Tasting | We tasted 5 wines, which were very good, worth the additional cost for the premium tour. |
