Day 173: Mendoza

Today I was able to get a little sleep because I have a booked a tour to a couple wineries via a bicycle. I really wanted to see some of the vineyards, but because it is Saturday nothing really is available and since the vineyards are all closed on Sunday, I figured this would be the best option.

The trip started off great when I hopped in the car and I had four women to greet me; three American and one Dutch girl would be joining me on the bicycle tour. I guess this is making up for the lack of communication yesterday.

Once we got our bikes, we were off to explore the wine culture of Mendoza. Mendoza is well known for its Malbec, which is a type of grape that produces an amazing red wine. We made our first stop at Carmelo Patti's winery. Patti is very well known as a wine expert and his winery is rated as one of the best wineries. Unfortunately, he was not there this afternoon, he was in Buenos Aires teaching a wine class. To be honest, I was not a fan of his red wines, which had too strong of a taste of olives for my taste (I personally really do not like olives).

When then made our way to our next winery, Bodega y Cavas de Weinert. This was a much better winery because they really introduced us to viticulture, by showing us the process of making the wine and how to properly sample and and taste the wine; Unfortunately, the wine is made in April, so I was not able to see some actually be made.

The wine at this winery was much better! I couldn't get enough of the white wine and the last red that we sampled.

Unfortunately, we had to leave. We then made our way to our next winery, Clos de Chacras winery, which is where we had lunch. The winery was founded by a man named Bautista Geronimo Gargantini in 1883. This winery used to be used just for his personal use and has now expanded into a global reaching but still small winery. What differs between his small operation and other large operations is that they are able to focus on creating the best quality as possible only, truly specializing in their production. We sat down for lunch and I had a great white, rose, and red wines with my steak and sweet potatoes.

After lunch, we took a tour of the facility.

We then made our way to A la Antigua, which makes various chocolates, liquors, and olive oils. Argentina is also known for their dulce de leche, which is like a chocolaty caramel. Antigua had a big spread of various chocolates, vegetable and fruit jam, and various types of olive oils. Needless to say, I was hovering over the four types of dulce de leche the lady had put out. I wanted to get a jar to bring home but, honestly, I would have eaten it all before I got to the hostel. After eating to much dulce de leche, we then sampled the liquor. She hopped behind the bar and started naming off all the bottles. Since we could only have two shots each, we decided to play it smart, ordering one shot eat and sharing it with everyone and then saving our last shot to all shoot the absinthe. I don't know if you have ever had a real absinthe shot, but it was rough, leaving a harsh burn in the back of my throat through that afternoon.

I spent a great afternoon indulging in my fare share of whine and chocolates and now I had to head back to my hostel. Once i got back, I learned that the hostel was offering a free empanada cooking class. This really old Spanish lady came in wearing her old muffin top cooking hat. She was delightful and spoke zero English. Surprisingly, empanadas are rather easy to make, it is the formation of the empanada itself that is an art. Lets just say I am not much of an empanada artist, but it was really tasty!

After we all ate our empanadas, we, once again, indulged in just the right amount Malbec into the night.