Mendoza - Argentina's Wine Region

Photo Album - https://goo.gl/photos/YmLbSnDLhkoWMnPz6

Hey Gang,


This post brings us back to the magical area of Mendoza, Argentina, which is home to the primary wine growing and producing region of Argentina.  It is easy to look back on this area fondly as it shares similarities with other fancy wine growing areas of the US.  It's a rather sprawling area centered around a decent sized town and surrounded by many different valleys and microclimates of awesome wine.

To be honest, the majority of our time spent in Mendoza just centered around drinking wine and eating good food, so that's what you'll see below.

One thing about Argentina, and subsequently most of South America that absolutely tickled me was how inexpensive it was to get a good or great bottle of wine.  Wine down there was so much more affordable, it made me rather frustrated at the thought of what we would spend for a similar quality of wine in the states.  I'm sure we have many friends who can articulate the various reasons why this is, but either way, we enjoyed the hell out of it while we were down there.

To give comparison, we never spent more than $15 USD on a bottle of wine from a retail or grocery store.  That same bottle of wine would easily be priced at 2x or more in the states.

The most we spent on a bottle in a restaurant was about $60 USD and it was one of the best bottles of wine I've ever had in my life (see below).

For the pricing of great wine alone, it was a very memorable place.  Above and beyond that, it was a beautiful area that was easy to walk around in with plenty of amenities and oddities to see.

Shirts with Funny Phrases

It was odd how regularly we saw people with shirts that had silly or strange phrases on them.  We had one person tell us that these were second hand shirts that were basically given away or sold for extremely inexpensive down here (said by an Argentinian guy wearing a US men's national soccer t-shirt), which was one hypothesis.  

The other fact was there were stores simply promoting these stupid shirts:

While I have a great deal of respect for the Simpsons, I do find it funny that they'd sell a Duff t-shirt in the equivalent of a Walmart (conveniently 3 blocks away from our hotel), but the "Text Goes Here" shirt was just ridiculous.  Either way, it was quite amusing to see this as a fashion trend throughout Mendoza.

As a side note, and an homage to the Simpsons (The Dr.'s favorite TV show of all time), we also stumbled upon this delight of a kiosko:

Wine Time

I was going to write a paragraph or two about living here for a week, or doing laundry or walking around the town, but realistically, we came to Mendoza for the wine and wine culture, so while the city itself was quite pleasant and easy to navigate, there's not much to report outside of the parks were nice, every street was shaded by trees (as is all of Argentina) and they had a casino in the middle of it, which was kind of fun.

Now, let's get to the good stuff!

I didn't have a better picture of us actually drinking from the fermentation tank, so I'll leave you with Alex from Pennsylvania who works in the restaurant industry and was a delightful addition to our Uco valley tour

We did a bunch of research and found these guys were well regarded for their tours, so we decided to do all 3 tours offered, while enjoying some downtime in between to explore the city.  We were not disappointed.

We started off on our first full night with a wine and food pairing at their office, followed by the newer growing area of the Uco Valley, wrapping up with the most prestigious Lujan de Cuyo area where most of the famous Malbec comes from.

Wine and Food Pairing

This was a SUPER fun way to kick off our stay in Mendoza.  We were paired up with 3 other couples in a pairing led by two delightful young neo-hippies from the area.  Both of these gals had worked in the wine industry for the last 10 years working as tour guides, tasting room managers and the like, and decided to partner with Ampora to do this wine/food pairing course.  They both were excellent cooks and had a really fun and relaxed demeanor to them, which brought a great vibe to the night.

The other 3 couples had their own fun backgrounds and stories, which made the night super interesting.  

There was a British couple who had rented out their house, sold a lot of their belongings and were on a similar life journey as us, except they were in their early 50s.  They basically tricked out a truck to become an RV, equipped with solar panels, a water purification system, mini shower, etc, and they were driving throughout South America.  

There were two super gay, super funny accountants (yes, funny accountants do exist), one from England and one from South Africa, who both relocated to New Zealand for work and were on holiday.  These dudes were very non-P.C., a bit raunchy and fun as hell to party with as we would come to find out.

The other couple wasn't nearly as interesting, so I already forgot their story, so we'll pass on them (no offense if you're the couple we forgot and are reading this blog, but the other 2 couples were WAY more interesting).

We tried 5 different wines, paired with 5 different empanadas made in the style of 5 different regions from Argentina.  It was fun not only to learn about the different wine growing regions and the characteristics of each, but also the different empanada styles and what made them distinct as well. For instance, Buenos Aires empanadas typically have olives, but the ones from Salta are almost always made with lard instead of butter and do not have olives.

Through several glasses of wine and hours of great conversation, we left the tasting with new friends and hopefully some new blog readers.

Uco Valley - Mendoza's Newest Growing Region

Like most other fancy wine growing area, real estate is at a premium and every micro-climate has it's own nuances and characteristics that make it desirable.  Since the lower valley of Lujan de Cuyo is more or less fully developed, wine growers in the area started figuring out about 20 or so years ago that the adjacent and higher altitude of the Uco valley could turn out some pretty solid grape juice, so more and more people started developing the area.  Think of Uco like Argentina's Sonoma.  They still make world-class wine, just not as highly prized as Lujan de Cuyo (Argentina's Napa).

We did four different wineries, all with their own charm and style.  This was a great way to start the official vineyard/winery tours as the Uco valley is a little newer, so the facilities were newer and more fancy.

I won't go into detail about each winery, but suffice it to say, most of the wine was great, some better than others, and we generally had an insightful and great experience at each place.

What was more momentous were the other 6 people on our trip.  We had a big of a mish-mash of internationals, us from Seattle, Alex with the mustache seen above, and our two new favorite accountants from the wine tasting!

As we rounded out the 3rd winery, we had about a 30 minute drive to our lunch spot.  All of us were working on a decent buzz at this point and between the accountants and us, we decided that it was time for a road soda.  We casually asked our tour guide if this sort of behavior was allowed in Argentina, to which after himming and hawing for a moment, he told us as long as we played it cool, it wouldn't be a problem.  So we proceed to each grab 2 cold bottles of bubbly for our group on the road.

It was like all 8 of us were back in college, passing around 4 bottles of sparkling wine and rose, telling stories, cracking jokes, etc.  I can't remember the last time I had so much fun being so damned irresponsible.  At least someone else was driving :)

Lunch was an exquisite multi-course, multi-wine paired meal set at a gorgeous winery and vineyard in the Uco valley.  We dined like kings and drank like sailors, all set in the beauty of the Argentinian countryside.

Knowing we had another 1.5 hours back from the Uco Valley to our hotels, we decided to keep the train rolling and pick up another 4 bottles for the drive home.  Hijinks, shenanigans and mayhem were all had, including some nap time and subsequent hugs and high-fives upon our drop offs at our respective hotels.

Lujan de Cuyo

Thankfully we waited a day or two to dry out before we hopped back on the booze wagon to wine town as we ventured out into the famed Lujan de Cuyo area of Mendoza.  While our tour group wasn't nearly as fun as the last group, we saw much more of the history of the area and visited some really cool spots.

It was cool to see the soil cut-away from ground level.  This winery made a small cave that you could walk down into, including this plastic retaining wall showing the make-up of the soil from the vines above.

This leg of the trip was more of deep dive into how the wine is grown and produced, including a walk through several vineyards and cellars, all with a detailed explanation of why each of these things were significant in the wine making process.  We went from small family owned boutique vineyards, to one of the largest producers in the area and got a different flavor and feel from each one.

While it was a much different trip than our Uco Valley one, it was still very cool and memorable.

Eating at the Famed 1884 by Francis Mallman

Francis Mallman is the most famous Argentine chef and known for his use of fire and charring in his cooking.  You can see some of his work on a few shows on Netflix, but my favorite was his episode of Chef's Table.  You get a taste of who this crazy guy is and why he's worth knowing about.

I had seen shows about him, heard about him and read about him, so we were excited to be in an area where he had a restaurant that we could try out.  Mind you, we have a fixed income, so I'm never excited to spend a bunch of money on a meal, but the US dollar travels far in Argentina, so we figured this would be a value compared to dining in his NYC restaurant or otherwise, so we made a reservation and made it happen.

It was nice how while this was certainly a fine-dining establishment, we were perfectly accepted wearing a pair of jeans and the nicest shirts we had in our luggage.  We quickly found out that this was the type of place that did nothing without purpose and certainly didn't bother with expedience, in a mostly pleasant way.  Since we had already been in Argentina for a few weeks by this point, we had come to expect that the pace of service was meant to allow for a more leisurely dining experience, regardless of where you were, so we were prepared to take our time at a leisurely meal.  This point was highlighted when we were at the bar and someone ordered a mojito.  Rather than simply putting ice in a blender to create crushed ice, or having some other device to create that texture, the bartender scooped ice out of the ice bin into a cheese cloth looking bag, then with a wooden mallet, hammered the ice into shape.  He then scooped it out to complete his cocktail, which took about 7 minutes to complete...for one cocktail.  As a result, we spent our first 30 minutes or so at the bar waiting for our drinks and chatting with the two gals next to us before we hit our table.

Above were our selections from appetizer (a selection of local tomatoes and avocado in vinaigrette) to our mains (grilled steak, I mean it IS Argentina) and our dessert of charred fruit served with ice cream.

To be completely honest here, I was really surprised at how average our main dishes were.  The tomatoes were exquisite (seriously, Dr. and I can't accurately describe how amazing all of the tomatoes were in Argentina.  We've never had tomatoes that tasted this good) and the charred fruit with ice cream was different and quite tasty, but the steak was no better than any other steak I had previously and actually wasn't even as good as the steak we had in Salta (you can read more about that on in our Salta post), which was a fraction of the price.

All-in-all, while the ambiance was great, cocktails were top notch and the apps and zerts were certainly tasty, I didn't think this place was worth the hype or the money.  Just my $0.02, but I'd maybe just try to grab a drink and something small from the bar if you can, rather than do the whole experience.

The Best Hotel in the World - Casa Glebinias

We decided since we were going to be in such a beautiful area and that this was our last place in Argentina that we would be, that we should go out with a bang and spend our last night or two in a really nice property.  We had done a good job of minding our budget and thought it would be nice to splurge a bit, so we looked at a few different websites and found that Casa Glebinias would be the best place to fit what we were looking for.  As of this writing, it has 682 reviews on TripAdvisor, with a full 5 star rating, and it is as accurate as anyone has described (Dr.'s note - this place was fucking magical).

It isn't so much a hotel as much as a super high-end BnB.  There were only 9 or 10 rooms between 5 different cottages, all on what was basically a larger parcel of family property that they converted years ago to be this kind of a place.  It is owned and run by members of the family and the experience was like nothing I had previously and by which all other hotels or BnBs will be judged. 

I could go on and on about this place, but as I'm sure it's not as amusing to you as it is to me, I'll stop here.  If you are visiting Mendoza, pay the money and stay here, if only for a night or two.  It's outside of the downtown area, but it's absolutely worth it.  I've never had such a positive hotel experience. Dr.'s note - Adam loved it so much he accidentally took the room key with him, which we had to FedEx back to them.

Bus Ride to Santiago de Chile

We left from Mendoza to catch our bus into Santiago to begin our Chile experience.  We read and were told by a few folks that it was well worth it to take the bus vs a plane from Mendoza to Santiago because the scenery was so nice.  We were not led astray.

Apparently on this drive, we also passed by the tallest peak in South America, which itself was kind of cool.  Also on the trip, we passed 11,000 feet at the Argentina/Chile check point, which was the first time we had experienced that kind of altitude.  We quickly found out that we are not meant to exist this high above sea level and prepped ourselves for our upcoming Lake Titicaca trip which would bring us to almost 15,000 feet above sea level.  Just crazy. (Dr.'s note - our bodies do NOT agree with altitude. They straight up revolted against us).

Wrapping up Argentina

It was bitter sweet leaving Mendoza and Argentina as there were many "firsts" had here.  While we have had many amazing adventures since Argentina, it is most certainly a country we want to visit again.  We had a month to spend in most of the country, but I still feel like we have so much more to see!  All-in-all, I am very thankful that we chose to begin our journey there and after 4 months of being on the road, I would gladly have done it over the same way again.

Until next time friends, where we bring you to our whirlwind of an adventure in Chile!

Adios,

A.T. y La Médica