Valparaiso wine tours run inland to the Casablanca Valley, forty-five minutes over the coastal range. Every one of them covers its tasting fees in the fare: two or three bodegas, a driver, and nobody in your party watching the road instead of the glass.
Three Casablanca bodegas in one afternoon — Casas del Bosque, Emiliana and Bodegas RE — with hotel pickup in Valparaiso and the tastings, snacks and water in the fare. Capped at six, and it needs two people to run.
From $250 per person (min. 2)
Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead.
A private car from your hotel or the cruise port to two cellars, two hours at each. Read the fine print: the transfer and the guide are private, the winery tour and the tasting are shared, and the refund window is three days rather than 24 hours.
From $273 per person
Free cancellation, but 3 days ahead — not 24 hours.
The wine day for anyone leaving by ship: pickup at the passenger terminal, an hour in the old quarter, Viña del Mar, then a Casablanca winery with the tasting covered, finishing at a Santiago hotel or the airport with the luggage aboard.
From $89 per person
Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead.
Every tasting fee here is inside the fare. Check what each day covers and where it picks you up, then choose your date.
Check AvailabilityA run inland. The Casablanca Valley sits about forty-five minutes from the coast, over the coastal range on the road toward Santiago. A wine day here is a vehicle, a driver and two or three bodegas with the tasting fees already paid.
The valley is younger than most visitors expect. The first commercial vines went in during 1982, planted by Pablo Morandé, and it took its own denomination of origin on 14 December 1994. Roughly 5,800 hectares are now under vine. The reason any of it works is the Humboldt Current: cold water offshore throws morning fog inland, and that fog keeps a latitude which should be too warm cool enough for Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.
What that means on the day is white wine and Pinot Noir rather than the big reds Chile is known for elsewhere. The estates pouring them are named on the listings themselves: Casas del Bosque, Emiliana, Bodegas RE, Viñedos Veramonte and Villard.
Every wine day here covers its tasting fees in the fare, and the three-bodega afternoon covers the pours at all three. You are not opening a wallet at each cellar door.
This is the whole argument. The valley has no useful transport between estates, so the alternative to a tour is one person tasting nothing and watching a winding road.
Most of a wine day happens indoors, which makes it the weatherproof booking in a city whose winter carries 162 mm of rain in June and whose main attraction is a staircase.
The three-cellar afternoon caps at six travellers and needs two to run, which is closer to a private day than to a coach tour.
One of these days collects at the cruise terminal and finishes at a Santiago hotel or the airport, which turns the transfer you had to make anyway into the wine day.
The real alternative is not a city walk, it is a coastal day trip out of Santiago, because all of those stop at a Casablanca vineyard on the way home. Here is the trade.
| A Valparaiso wine day | A Santiago day trip with a tasting | |
|---|---|---|
| Cellars visited | Two or three | One, on the drive home |
| Time in the valley | Four to five hours | Forty-five minutes to an hour |
| Where it starts | A Valparaiso hotel or the cruise port | A Santiago hotel or Airbnb |
| Fare | $89 to $273 per person | $56 to $72 per person |
| Also covers | The city on two of the three | Viña del Mar and the cerros |
| Group | Six to fifteen | Small group to eighteen |
| Best for | People who came for the wine | People who want the coast, with wine attached |
If the wine is the reason, take a wine day: one tasting at the end of a ten-hour coastal loop is a stop rather than a visit. If the coast is the reason and the wine is a bonus, the day trips do it well and cost less.
In the fare on these days: the vehicle and driver, the guide, the tasting fees at each named bodega, and on the three-cellar afternoon the snacks, bottled water and wi-fi aboard. On the post-cruise day, the luggage travels with you and the drop-off is at a Santiago hotel or the airport.
Not in the fare: lunch, on all three. Gratuities, on two of them. Any bottles you decide to take home, and the shipping if you want them sent — ask the guide first, because some estates ship to Europe and others do not.
A figure you will not see quoted: a walk-in tasting price at a named bodega. The estates do not publish those consistently, and a figure we cannot source is a figure we will not quote. What we can tell you is that on every day here the tasting is already covered.
Price band: $89 to $273 a person. Length: five to eight hours. Booking window: two to five days ahead in summer, more over a cruise weekend, because the six-place afternoon fills first.
Minimums and refunds: the three-cellar afternoon needs two travellers to run. Two of these days refund in full up to 24 hours ahead; the private wine day does not, and its own policy sentence gives you three days instead. Read that before you book a non-refundable flight around it.
Age: these are alcohol days, and the estates set their own rules about minors on the premises. If you are travelling with children, ask the operator rather than assuming.
Two or three cellars, the fees covered and somebody else driving the road back over the range.
Check AvailabilityIf you have one day in Valparaiso, spend it in Valparaiso. A wine day takes five to eight hours and most of them happen forty-five minutes inland, so it is the second day here rather than the first. A three-hour guided walk gives you the city itself.
If you do not drink, there is not much left: the drive is pretty, the cellars are handsome, and you will spend the afternoon watching other people taste. The coastal day trips give you a garden city, a fishing pier and two famous hills for a similar fare.
If you want a private cellar experience, read the inclusions carefully. The day sold as a private wine tour states plainly that the winery tour and the tasting are shared; what is private is the car that takes you there.
If you are on a ship for the day rather than disembarking, a wine day is too long and too far from the terminal clock. Stay in the city, or take the cruise-timed day that ends in Santiago if you are leaving for good.
That is the whole of the wine country from this coast. Every other way to spend a day here is compared with city tour valparaiso chile, fare beside fare, on Valparaiso Tours.