Mendoza is Argentina's most important wine region, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the country's entire wine production. We spent 4 nights in the city, 2 on our way into Chile and 2 on our way out. Our days consisted of visiting wineries and sampling their merchandise. Our evenings were largely spent in alcohol induced comas.
We went on a wine tour with "Trout and Wine Tours" (not sure of the relevance of the "trout") that picked us up at our hotel and looked after us for the whole day. This is what we did:
- Winery tour of Alta Vista – big, old and fancy winery. Tasted 3 (or was it 5) of their best wines in their tasting room;
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| Underground cellar where wine ages in barrels |
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| Wine tanks made of stainless steel, where grapes turn into wine |
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| Grey and special XX wine barrels |
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| Tasting room |
- Winery tour of Sontano (remember slightly less of this one). The grapes were in the process of being harvested so the whole vineyard was full of pinkish, purpleish people working the grapes;
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| Picking out the reject grapes by hand |
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| Putting the old grape skins on a trailer, later to be mixed with other stuff to make fertiliser for the vines |
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| More tanks - these ones are empty, but may be used in the future when the winery has more vines (inflation is unpredictable in Argentina so best buy everything you need asap) |
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| Skins |
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| Entry to vineyard (Andes faintly visible in background) |
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| Easy art idea |
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| Drinking |
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| The best barrel, or so we learnt |
- 4 course lunch at Belasco de Baquedano including steak, cheese, something sweet … and 7 (or was it 8) wines;
- Tour of another winery and tasting of some other wine. Don’t remember much of this winery except that it had a very cute dog.
We spent another day cabbing around the Lujan de Cuyo (a particularly good region for Malbec grapes). We visited a gorgeous boutique winery called Dolium (which imports to Australia), where we tasted grapes in different stages of the fermentation process (cloudy-sour-grape-juice, warm-sugary-fermenting-grapes, alcoholic-acidic-almost-but-not-quite-wine-tasting-grapes and wine). We also had a tasting session of 6 wines with the owner of the vineyard (and his cute dog called Mia).
Afterwards we pushed our taxi down the street to help it start, then had a beautiful 5 course lunch with 6 wines at Ruca Malen. It included a smoked aubergine croquette, a lomo steak with vegetables, white chocolate panacotta, and many other fancy things.
On our other day in Mendoza, we went white water rafting. Calling the water “white” in the circumstances was a little misleading. It was blue, smooth and freezing cold. Our very average tour guide yelled at us to paddle hard towards rocks and other obstacles to make the boat rock. Halfway through my feet went numb and I couldn’t feel my legs.
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| Very average contract, for them. We could have easily sued if anything went wrong |
We drove from Mendoza to Santiago, Chile, through the Andes. It was a beautiful drive - towering mountains, past the highest point in South America (Aconcagua), through lots of tunnels ... amazing! Mum didn't get her passport stamped upon entry into Argentina so we were held up the border for a couple of hours waiting for bureaucracy to run it's course, and some of the hairpin turns on the edges of deadly cliffs made my stomach turn, but otherwise it was a very pleasant drive.
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| Puenta del Inca, a natural rock bridge and the remains of an old ski resort swept away in a flood many years ago. The high levels of sulfur in the water here turn everything yellow |
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| You can buy any souvenir you can imagine, covered in a yellow sulfur crust |
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| Channelling Diego, except no Chimmarrao |
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| New country |
