Around the Clock on the Clos

7:00

What the hell is that sound? It’s piercing through my blurry, fever dream. A dream I probably just entered an hour ago as my body finally rid itself of any lingering toxins induced by over-indulging in wine the night before. Christ—what is that sound? I shuffle around in bed and pull my phone out from under me. It’s way too early for this, and it’s 0℃ outside. The lack of a heating system on the estate dictates that it’s also 0℃ in my room. I glance to my right at the clothes that I arranged half-awake the night before on the empty twin bed next to mine: tan work pants, Target-brand t-shirt, Asics pullover (my only long-sleeved layer), underwear, socks. All covered in varying proportions of mud, twigs, olive oil, and dog excrement. You’d need a legion of warriors to drag me out of my comfy, warm bed into the dry, ice-cold air. I’m hitting snooze. Twice. Thrice. Four times.

Now, I’ve got 20 minutes until showtime and only a measly 40 extra minutes of intermittent sleep to show for it. Reluctantly, I swing my feet down onto the frozen cobblestone floor and reach for my pants.

8:00

Negra and I enter the kitchen. We’ve just cut through the biting morning air as we took the long way around the house towards the annexed dining room and kitchen. Watching the morning fog suspended just barely over the plants of the vineyard still doesn’t get old. It’s for this view that the longer walk always vale la pena. Later on, as the day warms, I know the fog will dissipate and reveal the magnificent backdrop of the snow-capped Andes on the horizon.

Martina, the resident helping hand here, has started a fire by the time I enter the dining room, but the annex is far from warm. Bidding her a buenas, hands buried in my sweater pockets, I turn to Martina's compatriot in the kitchen this morning. Felipe is doing precisely what all five-year-olds are extraterrestrially capable of at 8 AM compared to us mortal adults: running around the kitchen, bouncing off the walls, and emitting a level of energy as if he had just tried a cappuccino for the first time in his life but told the barista to hold the milk and dump in a Redbull in its place.

It’s time to prep breakfast. My French counterpart here, Théo, begins making the dough for our fresh bread and shredding apples and pears from the local market for a fruit salad. As for me, I’ve commandeered beverage duty for the mornings. Upon completion of squeezing oranges for their juice, I flit over to the tea and coffee. Steeping the tea is easy enough other than Felipe physically wrapped around my right leg as I try to slip through the small, rustic kitchen. I prep three moka pots and one French press for our morning coffee. Personally, I’ll go for the moka pot every time. We use coffee Marco has imported from Italy—I consider it a sin to drink it from a presa francesa. Regardless, I prep both brews. Besides, Felipe loves to push down the pressing mechanism on the French press. And I choose not to relive his reaction the last time I forgot to let him.

9:00

Marco pulls a few more pieces of fresh bread from a baking sheet in the fireplace. As with everything else we do around here, the bread is made as if we’re in the Stone Age. The philosophy at the Clos (a French word for a small vineyard) that Sergio and Marco preach is to be as close as possible to making everything by hand and wasting nothing in the process. That includes the material used in the house (which more closely resembles a castle) as evidenced by cement walls reinforced with emptied wine bottles, the firewood yielded from broken-down shipping crates and pruned vines, and the compost we use from any discarded scrap of food.

The bread this morning pairs exceptionally well with the apricot jam Sergio bought from a nearby family in Población and the perfectly sharp block of goat cheese that comes from the south of Chile. As with any other morning here, I consume about ⅓ of the three-pound block alongside my fruit salad and mashed avocado. I make sure to fill up too. The problem with breakfast this early (aside from not ever being hungry), is that I know lunch is a long way out.

Marco, Sergio, and Théo are talking about something in French. This conversation shifts at some point into Spanish and then English before flowing back into French. Marco and Sergio each speak six languages due to their former lives abroad, and meals typically go down the route of an expert-level Duolingo lesson in the mornings. I’m still a bit too groggy to play trilingual telephone, so I sip my coffee and silently run through some of the elementary French phrases I learned the day prior.

10:00

The sun has finally poked out over the Andean cordilleras on the eastern horizon by now and quickly warmed the day. Temperatures fluctuate rapidly here—it’s one of the aspects that primes this valley for wine-making. Having finished washing the dishes from breakfast, I step outside, strip my sweater, and leave it hanging on the same wooden beam of the patio as always when headed to the shed.

Around the side of the annex, Théo and I gear up for the daily gauntlet: feeding the ~40 dogs of the Clos. Outfitting my yellow wheelbarrow with nine silver bowls, a six-gallon drum of dry dog food, a rake, a dustpan, and a bag half-filled with feces from the day before, I spin around face-to-snout with the most eager canines on the property. It’s imperative that I oversee the dogs while they dine and ensure each eats their full bowl and doesn’t steal from the others.

I’ve come to know each of the dogs and their individual tendencies during breakfast by now. There’s Hannibal, always first to eat, first to bark at you if he’s not, and also first to steal another bowl if not properly supervised. There’s Rinaldo, a mini-white poodle that only eats when fed by Théo’s hand. There’s Pirula, certainly no less than 15 human years old as evidenced by her utter lack of bowel control. There’s Sisyphus (a name I gave him after a character by the same in Homer’s Illiad), doomed to forever spin and scratch his butt on the ground while never quite satisfying some awkwardly placed itch. There’s Niña, a total pushover that will inevitably lose half her bowl to Hannibal. There’s Bertrand, a beautiful golden labrador that is more likely to go off and steal another egg from the nearby goose colony than finish his food. And then there’s my favorite, Negra, the black, overly-fluffy, and chubby black Aussie resembling more bear or cow than dog. It’s been hard to get Negra to eat lately as she’s been obsessed with catching the rogue mouse that scurries around the food shed.

I move on to the next of the five feeding spots across the grounds. Feeding the dogs will take up the next hour and a half as Théo and I tackle the massive property. Each set of dogs sticks to a certain area of it. Unfortunately, Théo poop-scooped yesterday, so today I’ve got the reins. As I scoop and meander the estate, Théo makes sure to toss some corn to the 12 chickens and lone peacock (self-deluded that it’s also a fellow chicken) in the nearby coop. We check for eggs too. Only three today. The chickens are always on edge as they’re antagonized daily by the dogs on the other side of their wire enclosure.

11:00

We finish the dogs early and on the hour today. Perfect—extra time for pruning. For the last two weeks, Théo and I have been prepping the vineyard for springtime. In a few more weeks, the vines should start flowering and spitting out grapes in due time. There are certainly worse jobs. While my hand does cramp from countless cuts through live branches and my back is starting to spasm from stooping to cut the ground-level plants, it’s sort of peaceful out here. The way Marco has us pruning is sort of like a puzzle too as I identify which five shoots of the plant to keep while discarding the rest. Cut the low, the inside, and the dead.

Théo and I prefer to work in silence for the first part of the day. It’s just myself, the beating sun, and the birds. For a while, the only soundtrack besides the snipping of shears is the cawing amongst the other 30-40 peacocks that live on the Clos. That is, the only soundtrack until I throw on my “bad-boy rock n’ roll” playlist. Théo and I normally start with this one. From there, it’s up to my random assortment of downloaded albums. There’s no internet out here in the remote Colchagua Valley, so we’ve been making do with a wide swath of genres. But I enjoy pruning to rock the most. It doesn’t make a lot of sense either. There’s just something that feels right in pruning a vine while Fountains of Wayne jam about Stacy’s mother.

12:00

The sun is properly out now. The back of my neck is where I catch the majority of its rays. The goal is to prune anywhere between 200 and 300 plants per day depending on how big they are. Realistically, this should cover almost all the small vineyard by the time I leave here in a week or so. I fancy the idea of buying a bottle of 2023 from the Clos and knowing that I probably trimmed up the plant that produced it. The music shifts to Elvis Presley’s Greatest Hits.

13:00

When pruning the vineyard for hours on end with just music or ambient birds cawing in the background, the mind starts to wander. I find that the days spent out here are when I’m the most reflective on where I’ve been so far and where I’d like to go. Living with Marco and Sergio has put more parts of the world, both in this southern continent and elsewhere, on the map than I can possibly imagine visiting. It’s an odd feeling to have so much freedom as to where I go next. Traveling alone springs me from heeding anyone else’s agenda but my own. It’s because of this that the presence of that freedom, and all the potential decisions that come with it, actually can feel overwhelming at times. It feels as if choosing one route shuts the door on ten potential others. Go north, and forfeit experience south. Go east, forfeit west. Of course, it’s never this black and white, and there are always other opportunities to visit those places left behind on another trip. But in the moment, it never quite feels like it.

Choosing to procrastinate further my election of a next destination leaves my thoughts wandering back to some of the more interesting days I’ve had here on the vineyard. Among them are the nights I’ve helped cook five-course meals for 12 people late into the wee hours of the morning. Others were I’ve tended to the wood-fired pizza oven while two Argentinian car mechanics recited stanzas of the holiest of gaucho texts, the epic poem of Martín Fierro. There are others where we’ve even mock-officiated a wedding between a young Brazilian couple, with Sergio wearing a hand-cloth around his neck as the reverend and Marco waving a bushel of parsley as if to sage.

Perhaps the night that sticks out as the most head-scratching was a recent overnight trip to Santiago that Marco and Sergio brought Théo and me along for. Pushing through the choked rush hour of the capitol, we picked up 300 oysters from a local fishing operation based out of the southern island of Chiloé and a dozen baguettes from a local French baker. At their flat in Santiago, we prepped four types of homemade mayonnaise and a gluttonous amount of desserts just in time to host an evening get-together with Marco and Sergio’s friends. Among the high-class attendee list were the ambassadors to Chile from Austria, Malaysia, France, Germany, and others, a French opera singer (who performed later acapella), and a Spanish communications officer that a weekend prior we had hosted at the vineyard (and did well to reinforce the Spanish stereotype of smoking a pack every hour). As I sat sipping wine with all the diplomats, Théo and I could only manage to flash knowing glances between ourselves as if to say “How did we end up here again?”

14:00

“Shay! Time for lunch!”

Marco signals us in for lunch right on cue. He and Sergio tend to call me by a mix of names ranging between “Che”, “Ash”, and “Dash”. And yes, they’ve seen it spelled out too. I just chuckle at what I hope is an ongoing joke. The call for lunch is at a good time, as three hours in is about when my back really needs a break. Sure, I can squat for pruning, but if I’m trying to go quickly, the motion only tends to slow me down. While we prep breakfast and dinner with him, Marco tends to make us lunch while we’re out in the vineyard. As Marco puts the finishing touches on the pasta aglio e olio and apple-celery salad, Théo and I take turns stretching each others’ backs, careful to avoid any freshly laid landmines by the dogs.

As is customary here after a long morning, I take a Chilean Becker beer from the fridge and sit down at the outdoor table. Marco and Sergio start off the conversation about a new political issue (or is it an recurring one?). By now, I’m at the point where I can well understand a conversation in Spanish, but I’m too busy scarfing down noodles to tune my mental radio into the fast-paced discussion. I don’t expect I look any more civilized than the dogs attacking their first bowl of chow in the mornings. The conversation then shifts to reminiscing on old travel stories so I tune in my antenna for the rest of the meal.

15:00

The moka pot whistles on the stove. I pluck it off and bring it back outside to the table. We never adjourn lunch without a prolonged moment for a digestivo and dessert. Today’s is a pisco-carmelized orange slice with sugar and marrón glacé. “Self-control” is not part of the language on the vineyard.

Over our dessert and espresso, Marco lets Théo and I know that the mission for the rest of the day has changed. We have guests coming this weekend, so rather than pruning in the afternoon, we need to prep the house. This means sweeping and organizing the courtyard and going out to the very back of the property to find firewood. A shift in tasks is pretty normal here; priorities on the Clos are fluid. Not to rush, we’re assured, so we take our time and finish our coffee under the sun.

16:00

Théo and I enter the courtyard carrying a wheelbarrow, one rake, and one broom. Rinaldo is riding in the wheelbarrow. We’ll be sweeping for at least the next hour.

Standing in the middle of the courtyard and spinning around, I can count no less than 16 tall, green, wooden double-doors. Each door here is like a portal. Open one and find guest quarters. Open another and find a passage to the bodega where the wine is fermenting. Another, a library made up of roughly 2,000 books and 500 DVDs in six different languages. Another, the pool. Another, the primary rooms, housing a dining room and a globally-sourced art collection of statues, paintings, and platters. Another, simply still sitting unused and unrenovated. After 17 years and two earthquakes, this place has yet to be finished.

I’m two weeks in, and I don’t know what’s behind every door. It’s pretty easy to get lost here; I don’t want to open a closed door and see something I’m not meant to either. Still, I can’t help but wonder what’s behind door number four…

17:00

I’m putting the finishing touches on the courtyard. The wheelbarrow is no longer full of a white poodle, but rather sticks, leaves, and dog poop—freshly laid as we were cleaning thanks to Rinaldo. The defeating part about this outdoor clean-up is that I’ll probably end up doing it all over again next week. The trees have little mercy. I dump the final compost outside.

Eager to wrap the day, Théo and I hop into the beat-up Toyota Hi-Lux and fire up the white truck. There’s a hitch though: it’s a manual transmission. Both of us understand how to drive a stick in concept but have never really done so in practice. I decide to take the wheel, and therefore the culpability if we crash. A few lurches and some stutter-stops later, our combined brain power gets us rolling through the tight paths of the vineyard. Naturally, Rinaldo comes along with us for the ride.

18:00

With the firewood finally all stacked next to the kitchen, Théo and I split and head towards a break until dinner. As I walk towards my casita, Sergio asks me to join him on a run into town to pick up some oil and marmalade. Anything marmalade-related, I’m normally in on. I’ve also learned by now to just nod and accept the extra tasks that come out of the woodwork here in the face of a rest. I don’t mind. It’s only temporary. I can always temporarily run myself into the ground.

In Población, we stop by a mini-market. I’m pleased to meet the family that’s been making the sweet jams I’ve been borderline drinking every morning at breakfast. We stock up on mora (blackberry), damasco (apricot), durazno (peach), and cirvela (plum). Lord help me. And they’re only 3,000 pesos a jar too.

On our way home, Sergio and I hit the only grocery store in town, “Super Patito”. Named after the owner Pato, this store is one of five that make up the entire commercial side of Población. All are owned by Pato. Down the block lies “Patito Tires”, “Auto Servicio Patito”, “Dónde el Pato” (a roadside restaurant), and “Hosteria Patito” (lodging). Sergio is convinced this Patito fella has cartel ties—each shop a different laundering front. Sergio goes on to tell me that, every time he visits the store, he is the utmost friendly to Pato to stay on the good side of the affair.

19:00

I crash into a hammock hanging in the courtyard. With only an hour left until dinner at this point, I elect to read my book. On other days with more energy, I might go for a run between farms, or on days with more time, I might catch up on sleep. Today I have neither. I’m exhausted from the last couple of weeks.

Last weekend, we hosted guests both nights. The weekend before that was a holiday weekend where we hosted guests for four nights. Diplomats from Sergio's past, doctors of presidents, families, other vineyard owners, young couples, older couples—the entertaining never really stops here. These nights and afternoons are more often spent by hours in the kitchen. It’s a wonder when we have days that actually leave time for pruning and wine-making. Much less free time to read or write or rest.

Today is no different. Before I get one page into my book, my head nods onto my chest, and I’m out.

20:00

Freshly showered, I walk back into the kitchen. Dinner prep starts at 8 PM sharp every evening. Luckily, it’s only the four of us, so tonight’s meal should be a little more tranquil. While the work days are long, the meals here make all the bother fade away. Marco is Tuscan Italian, meaning the man can cook. Never have I seen him use a recipe or make anything with more than five ingredients. It’s pure majesty the way he’s able to pair seemingly obscure ingredients. Since I’ve been at the Clos, I’ve helped him kick out mushroom risotto, pesto and potato towers, Spanish paella, salmon and sardines, avocado soup, beet soup, oysters, handmade pasta, and the list goes on. Tonight is French onion soup night. I pour a glass of wine and roll up my sleeves.

Marco boils a bottle of the house vino blanco, and I start skinning the onions. We’ll caramelize them in another pot before adding them to the wine. As I peel, I take care not to make too much of a mess, or Marco will let me know about it. His philosophy is that the best chefs clean as they cook. While that might be the case, this is a questionable ask when cooking with a Tuscan. There has been many a time where I’ve wiped down the counter around a pizza or a soup only to have Marco immediately throw a full fistful of salt directly back onto it. He’s lucky when 10% of the salt ends up on the dish.

As we cook, Marco is insistent that we keep our glasses of wine full. I know better than to refuse a drink by now too. I hold my empty one back out.

21:00

Dinner is served. Soup pot on a slice of tree trunk as a hot pad. French bread grilled with butter alongside. It’s a simple meal, and I take three bowls. Gluttony is a resident deadly sin here.

Marco opens another bottle of wine and pours himself a test; he always tests the wines before we drink. Taking a sip, he closes his eyes and emits a loud “MMMMM”, falling into a blissful harmony of delight. Never have I seen a man so consistently enamored by his own creations. On the odd occasion the bottle isn’t up to snuff, he takes it away and puts it on a shelf in the kitchen. Tomorrow, we’ll pour it into a barrel outside of the bodega to ferment into vinegar.

22:00

I dunk another plate into the washbin and gaze down the endless line of dishes to knock out before bed. Of course, there’s no dishwasher and not even hot water, so I’m at the whim of a tea kettle to sanitize the china. I work at its boiling speed and no faster. Next to me is another full glass of vino tinto to pass the time. The kettle whistles and signals time for another round.

23:00

Exiting the kitchen, I find Sergio and Marco still at the table. Smoke is slowly filling the dining room with a haze—I’ve been meaning to clean the chimney for days now. Of course, it’s story time again. I oblige dreary-eyed.

Marco and Sergio's careers have taken them around the world and then some. It’s always a pleasure to hear their stories—inspirations for future expeditions of my own. There’s a story of a dive with sharks in Malaysia. A club they both love in Belgium where you enter on Friday night and don’t leave until Monday morning (I hold my tongue about a subdued experience of this I had in Berlin once). Then another of Marco's family history, a distant ancestor beheaded and the result being sent to his wife’s doorstep. Sergio refutes this one which induces Marco to get up from the table to scramble through old book clippings to find proof.

I’ve heard oral histories of Portugal, stories about the Chile of old, the France of old, the Italy of old. Predictions about where world leaders’ actions will lead us next. How we’re all already damned. How every old city used to have a glory day, and how now there’s nowhere that can live up to its past. I don’t particularly agree with this perspective on travel.

Indeed, this is the sort of conversation I’ve heard not just here at the vineyard, but amongst countless other travelers that have arrived at a destination upon which they’ve placed too high of expectations only to be disappointed when they find it overcrowded by tourists or more rundown than photos on Google Images. It calls to my mind a quote by French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss:

Yes, the movies that depict classic Italian streets and the Instagram post featuring the Pyramids of Giza may fall pale in reality, but to rue the fact that a place is not how it “used to be” is to ignore the present state of the place they're in. Even more, it’s always interesting when you meet a traveler with a bit of vitriol towards these places overcrowded with tourists. After all, to loathe the presence of tourists is to inadvertently loathe themself.

Tonight, I decide I’ll play some devil’s advocate with this debate, so I pour myself another glass and settle in.

00:00

I’m properly gassed now. This happens without fail every evening as we draw the night out at the kitchen table telling travel stories, talking European political sentiment, and uncorking more and more bottles. I’ve given up trying to drink water here at this point. Marco has two sayings that he loves to remind me of: “Never drink water in public as it’s impolite” and “Clean your liver, but never your mind.” I think the latter was in reference to a ginger-turmeric tea he made once and has since used in any context involving drinks.

All too familiar with the regret I’ll have from pushing far past the midnight hour, I bid everyone a good night and grab a piece of leftover bread from this morning to coax Negra back to the casita with me. I’ve implored her to sleep in the foyer outside my room to chase away the rats that sneak around at night. I’ve never seen her actually catch one, but her intimidating figure does enough to keep the critters in the walls.

It’s a clear night above. As I walk, I can make out the constellations of Sagittarius, Crux, and others exclusive to the Southern Sky. Watching stars on the other end of the planet from home is always a peculiar feeling as I see a completely different sky than family and friends directly north of me. If I wasn’t so sleepy, perhaps I’d feel that “infinitesimally small” feeling everyone talks about.

I arrange my clothes for the next morning, a move I’ve been pulling to milk some extra shut-eye. Making sure Negra is situated on her blanket and setting my alarm optimistically for 7 AM, I flop onto my bed—asleep as my face buries into the pillow.