After 2 lazy-ish days, we finally decided to do a wine tour. The weather here is hot hot hot (38 degrees Celcius) so it´s quite hard to do anyhing but lounge about and eat meat and drink wine. This afternoon, we went to 2 vineyards and an olive oil factory. It was really interesting because I don´t know half as much about wine, even though I drink tons!
We went to Lujan de Cuyo district which is one of the oldest wine producing areas in Argentina and produces 60% of all Argentinian wines. On the drive there, we passed big signs saying "Tierra Malbec" which got us really excited. For some people, visiting churches or museums or Disneyland gets them excited. For us, visiting the Malbec vineyards was a religious experience in itself! The first vineyard is almost 200 years old called "Dante Robino". Our English speaking guide explained the entire wine making process, this vineyard specialises in Malbec and Sparkling Wines. We even got to taste some grapes of the vines, which are protected by a metal covering from hail storms.
The most important things I learnt were that first - Prosecco, Cava, sparkling wines of any names are actually all the same as Champaigne (which is trademarked). I always thought they were different drinks! The second thing is that if you are buying a young wine (usually you can determine this by price and brand) do not go for older years thinking it will be better; instead always buy a wine in the year closest to the one you are in. Once you pour red wine into a glass, if it has brownish tints, it is probably not good to drink. And finally, if you buy white wine, when you pour it into a glass it should be light yellow with white tints. If it is dark yellow with brownish tints, throw the wine away.
We then went to the tasting room and had 2 reds and a white sparkling wine. Wine tasting is actually the only sophisticated way you can down glasses of wine, no judgement! They bring you the new glasses so quick that you have no choice, and I ain´t going to waste any wine in the spit bucket! We liked the wines but not enough to buy bottles and lug them around the rest of Argentina, Brazil and Colombia in our backpacks.
The second vinyard we visited was a new vinyard opened in 2006 and family run. This looked pretty new and most of the vines would only be ready 2-3 years from now. Once again, did a tour and then wine tasting of 3 different wines. This vinyard specialises in ´Carmenere´ wines and actually is in the top 5 Carmeneres in the world. We liked one of them enough to buy, though I´m sure we´ll have drunk it before even leaving Mendoza.
Finally on to the olive oil factory. We weren´t too interested at first but this was actually quite cool. At the end they had a lot of bread with different toppings to try out the different olive oils. As much as I like wine, I love bread more so this was the highpoint for me :)
Finally back at the hostel, we decided to go for some asado (bbq) highly recommended by an Irish couple we met earlier in the day and ordered the meat sharing platter. Though warned by our waitress that it was huge, we still went for it and it was the best meat I´ve eaten so far... ever. Bernie got the meat sweats and had to stop even though we had about half remaining but got it packed for breakfast tomorrow! So far Argentina is everything we´d hoped for -- great meat and wine!
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