You know, Wine tasting is a great social activity. It's not so much that you are tasting wine, but that you get to spend much of the day exploring the countryside. Mendoza is synonymous with good Malbec wines. And today we were off to the Mendoza countryside at the foot of the Andes Mountains.
I had read an article on the San Francisco Chronicle's website about touring the wine country around Mendoza. In the article the author had hired a guide to show him around. The author also put his email address in the article. So I contacted him, Fernando was his name. For about $75 dollars, we could have a personal guide/driver for the day. It seemed like a great deal so I made arrangements with him.
Fernando had met us in the hotel lobby the day before. We talked about the itinerary he had planned and agreed to the start time. So we left at around 9:00am, it took a good hour to get to the first winery. Interestingly enough there was a rally race in progress and it was coming right through Mendoza and on up through the Andes. The rally is the well-known Dakar Rally. The race for many years, beginning in 1979, began in Paris, went down through the Sahara Dessert in Africa and ended in Dakar, Senegal (Africa). Because of terrorist threats the race was moved to South America in 2009. It goes from Buenos Aires, over the Andes, to Chile. This is primarially an off-road endurance race. We saw many of the cars/trucks/motorcycles (there are many classifications in the race) participating in the rally. It gave us something interesting to talk about.
A rally car
We arrived at the first winery at around 10:30am and the English speaking tour had just started. The first winery was Bodega Cantena Zapata. It is a large winery with an international presence. Several of their wines are readily available in US grocery stores. If you go wine tasting in Argentina, I hope you like their Malbec wines, because that is the main attraction. I think the Argentinean Malbecs are a great food wine. They go well with the charcoal cooked steaks that they serve in Argentina. I would say they are similar to California Zinfandels. They also go well with barbecue hamburgers and Mexican burritos. We did some tasting and bought a few bottles to take home.
Cantena Zapata Barrel Room
Tasting at Cantena Zapata
The next winery was Achaval Ferrer, a very small but renown winery. Becky and I were the only ones on the premise at the time so we had a private tour. I bought 3 bottles of wine. I thought they were very good. In fact one of the labels that I bought turned up in Costco recently, so I bought some more. It was so good, a blend, Malbec That label was a mix of Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc.
Vineyards and landscape at Achaval Ferrer
Final stop out in the wine country was lunch at a place called LaGuarda. We ate in an outdoor courtyard. It was a very warm day, I believe it was around 95 degrees. But it was dry and we were very glad to be out in this rural area.
Becky and our waitress at LaGuarda for Lunch
The opposite side of the courtyard at LaGuarda
We made our way back to Mendoza and made a final stop at a wine bar to sample some more wines from various wineries of the area. We bought a few more bottles and headed back to the hotel, which was only a block away. We made arrangements to have our bottles shipped to the US. A Mendoza company specializes in shipping wine outside Argentina. They make sure the proper fees and taxes are paid to get the wine through customs. We met with the company representative in the hotel lobby with wine and cash in hand. Away our wine went, hopefully we would see it again. After that we looked for a place to eat dinner. We settled on one of the hotel restaurants. It was a nice quiet dinner and then we headed off to bed. Tomorrow would be Santiago.
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