Hola chicos!
Our fourth and final tour was at Carinae, owned by a sweet French-Argentine couple. Our grand wine tasting adventure left us with a wealth of knowledge about Mendocino wines, four bottles of malbec... and a little tipsy! Thank you Javier for safely touring us around in your wine-mobile!
I'm back with more updates from our travels! After visiting the beautiful waterfalls in Iguazu, Dan and I jetted over to Mendoza, Argentina, home of the world-famous malbecs (in case you aren't a wine-o, malbec is a varietal of wine). We spent five nights during late April in Mendoza, a large sprawling and historic capital city, just about 20 minutes from some of the best malbec wine makers in the world.
April in this part of the southern-hemishere means turning leaves in the vineyards... drop in the impressive Andes Mountains in the background and you've got a pretty nice setting to taste a little vino!
During our five night stay, I don't know how many times we were told how fortunate this valley is to receive 355 days of sun per year... I can tell you, however, that we experienced about 3 of the 10 days sin sol (without sun)! It was cold and a bit wet, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves. Lucky for us, our two sunny days were spent en las bodegas (in the vineyards). We had hoped to do a bit of Andean hiking while in Mendoza, but were more or less limited to drizzly, urban walks.
Rainy afternoon... Why not go to the movies? We watched Las Piratas (The Pirates) en español :)
On our first full day, we hired a cab to take us out to Tapiz winery for a bit of wine tasting. Before leaving the states, Federico, an Argentine-American friend of mine, told Dan and I that if we make it to Mendoza, we should contact his Aunt Carolina about arranging a tour of Tapiz, where she works in the events and publicity. After a horse and carriage led tour through the vines, and several small glasses of wine, Carolina offered to drive us home and give us a brief tour of the sites along the way!
Our next day of wine tasting was a luxurious and completely custom tour organized by Javier, our private guide and trusty driver. He called ahead of time to reserve us intimate wine tastings and tours at four highly-respected wineries. The first was private tour and tasting at a small, family-owned and operated winery named San Diego.
Our second stop was a tour at Mendel, where world-renowned wine-maker, Roberto de la Mota, makes his wine.
Next was Ruca Malen, where instead of a classic tour and tasting, we sat down for a gourmet, seven course, wine-paired meal... wow!
We rented a car and attempted an Andean adventure on our last day, but the low cloud cover inhibited the spectacular scenery we had heard so much about... :( Even so, we still had a fun time getting outside the city and driving through the mountains.
That's it for now! Next stop is a week in Bariloche, in the Argentine Lake District!
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