On this episode, Jake Standerfer of Coffee Culture Coffee Roasters, a roaster and pioneer in specialty coffee in Santiago joins us to talk all things coffee. In the late aughts, Jake began roasting coffee in his bathroom, kicking off his largely self-taught,...
We are thrilled to welcome Santiago Achaval, an icon in Argentine wine who has been heralded as a “Master of Malbec” and considered one of South America’s most revered winemakers. Santiago joins Liz to discuss how the wine “virus” infected him with a passion...
Two Sundays ago, the first Sunday Suppers communal dinner party in Chile, and South America, was born. Thirty people came together between guests and organizers in an evening celebrating local end-of-winter produce, food artisans, and a few of Chile’s...
While most of the year we plan made-to-measure, private travel, our Signature Journeys (small group trips) are very near and dear to my heart. Perhaps it’s because I get to play hostess during part of each one, and meet so many of you. Signature...
Terroir. You may have heard this expression before, or perhaps you might think it’s just another word overused by wine snobs. The reality it is that’s just a French word that the French use to talk about where products come from. And they use it all the time....
Ten years ago, it would have been unfathomable, perhaps even crazy, to speculate that a white grape hailing from Galicia, Spain, would be blossoming into Uruguay’s most notable white wine variety. It has adapted beautifully to Uruguay’s soil and maritime...
Style stays while fashion fades -- Coco Chanel Last weekend, I completely overhauled my closet. Purged, perhaps, would be a more accurate verb. It was a liberating experience that was severely overdue. I said tchau to holed designer jeans from my 20s,...
Desenchufar in Spanish, literally, means to unplug. A cell phone, a TV, our brain, or the art of disconnecting, for a little while, from life. In the past months, we had been running around like mad men busy with work, baby, and life so we decided it was high...
In late June, we decided to ditch the smoggy air in Santiago and head south to the clean breezes of the Colchagua Valley for one of our last (adult) weekends as a couple Little One’s due date arrived. That Saturday in Colchagua was cold but clear, typical of...
In late March, my husband and I embarked on our annual road trip over the Andes from Santiago to Mendoza, Argentina, one of the most scenic routes in South America. We said tchau to the sprawling metropolis of Santiago and cruised past arid, caramel-colored...
If you drink alcohol while pregnant, people often feel free to judge you. This topic has become a very relevant theme for me now that I am 24 weeks (six months) pregnant, given that my profession revolves around travel, food, and wine in South America. The...
Here we are again. Valentine’s Day. Some people love this day, other people hate it, but why does it even exist? There are several theories over its origin but many point to the third century during the Roman empire. A saint, called Valentine, was about to be...
When I first heard about the project in Chilean congress known as the “Ley Monsanto/Monsanto Law”, technically in Chile called Derechos de Obtentores de Nuevas Variedades Vegetales, I could hardly believe it. With all the energy and dedication that Chile has invested...
Can you believe it is December already? How did that happen? I realize I have seemingly been in hiding (at least on the blog) for the past couple months. Truthfully, we have been continent hopping around South America, the US, Europe, and N. Africa. It has...
Not too long ago, I found a map in our library entitled, “La carte gastronomique de la France” by Andre Bourguignon. It was forgotten among old Martha Stewart Living magazines. I have no idea how I got a hold of this map, but a probable lead is from my mother...
We have been talking about Chile’s amazing wine diversity for a while now so I thought it was high time to do a short but sweet blog post outlining the major valleys in the Central Valley of Chile. The wine-growing region in Chile extends over 1,000 kilometers...
Mendoza, fittingly known as the Tierra del Sol, is a sun-drenched land that, in actuality, is an irrigated scrubland in the arid rain shadow of the towering Andes. Most of Mendoza remains a desert although parts of it were converted into a series of oases over...
Not long ago, I had a hankering for seafood, so I woke up bright and early to beat the crowds to arrive at the Mercado Central. I was on the prowl for machas, razor clams, which are indigenous to Chilean shores and one of the most popular shellfish. When I...
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