Mendoza

The Aging of Wines

If you are a person who likes their food and wine, you owe it to yourself to get down to Argentina. Specifically, you owe it to yourself to get down to Mendoza. While grapes are now grown in just about all parts of Argentina (short of the deep southern states in Patagonia), the area surrounding Mendoza is still the most famous and productive of all the Argentine wine-making regions.

Passing Through the Andes

I arrived in Mendoza -- crossing over the Andes from Chile -- direct off a ten-hour bus ride from Valparaíso. Despite there being plenty of overnight buses from the Chile, this is a bus ride well worth doing during the day. The journey along the switchback roads, leading to and from the 4,300 metre a.s.l. border-crossing at the Paso Libertadores, offers up spectacular views of the Andes; including Anacongoa, the highest peak in South America.

The relative proximity between Mendoza and the Chilean border serves up another advantage to dedicated oenophiles. One can easily compare between Chilean and Argentine wines by spending a few days visiting the vineyards surrounding Santiago and then heading over to Mendoza. Or vice-versa.

Mendoza offers up quite a few things other than just wine. The city is a base for a lot of adventure sports in Argentina -- there are plenty of opportunities for trekking, white-water rafting, skydiving, paragliding and horse-riding. Climbers attempting to cross Anacongoa off their list of the Seven Summits set out from Mendoza. Within the city itself, the huge, urban Parque de San Martin provides a perfect setting for cycling, running and recreational sport.

I didn't do any of those except for playing a little bit of frisbee in the park. I was in Mendoza for the wine.

The Bodega de Familia Cecchin

Over the course of five days, I drank a lot of Argentine Malbec, with a little Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonney to mix it up. Wine is so plentiful here that places don't think twice about offering up unlimited wine at the tenedor libres. Sure, the free wine is just table wine, but it's a lot better than table wine back home. And after five or six large glasses, nobody is thinking about taste anyway. At the Oasis Hostel asados, I learned at pouring wine out of six-litre jugs is a lot harder than it looks. Especially whilst drunk.

I spent one of my days on an organised winery tour. Aside from wine tastings at three wineries, the tour included a late lunch at the last winery. That lunch should have soaked up the alcohol already in our stomachs and helped to make sure we all returned to Mendoza in a state somewhat short of dead drunk. Except that the lunch came with unlimited wine.

A Light Lunch, Argentine Winery Style

The next day, it was out to Maipú to rent some bikes and cycle the Ruta del Vino, visiting wineries and tasting wine along the way. We were somewhat sensible about this -- if riding bikes while hoovering down more and more wine with each passing kilometre can ever be considered 'sensible'. Being sensible consisted of riding out to the end of the fifteen-kilometre route and hitting the wineries on the way back. This way, we ensured that we would have the shortest distance to pedal when we were at our most inebriated.

Cycling Along the Ruta del Vino in Maipú

Cycling the wine roads was an entirely social experience. I left Mendoza with only Marianne. We picked up Robert at Mr. Hugo's (the rental store in Maipú). We joined up with two Johns, Jess, Sebastian and others while on the road.

Chipping In For a Numbered, Collection-Quality Bottle of Wine

There was enough of us that we were able to chip in ten pesos each to grab a bottle of collection-quality Malbec at the Bodega de Familia de Tomasso for a hefty hundred Argentine pesos. (Okay, that's only thirty dollars back home, but it's hefty for Argentina.) That bottle wasn't part of the official tasting, and would have cost a lot more had we purchased it from the attached winery restaurant, so we had to trudge it out to a picnic area and taste it out of plastic cups. It was classy.

Tasting of a Numbered, Collection-Quality Bottle of Wine... With Plastic Cups

Fortunately, the previous three days of wine consumption in Mendoza had built up our alcohol tolerance levels and we never got particularly smashed while riding.That came later when, after dropping off our bikes, we partook of the unlimited free wine provided by Mr. Hugo after each ride.

The only downside to Mendoza were the red-wine hangovers I had to nurse four mornings out of the six I spent in the city.

The amount of wine I drank was insane.

Almost as insane as this 'wall art' I found in the bathroom of a downtown Mendoza bar.

Mendoza Toilet Wall Art