Mendoza and wine tasting

We had a surprisingly good 19 hour bus journey from Salta down to Mendoza, helped by us not waking up until nearly 10am. Mendoza is a big city, but every bit as relaxed as Salta. The roads are filled with all sorts of classic cars (fiats, citroens, peugeots, fords and VWs from the 70s and 80s) pootling along, which seems to capture the mood of the place perfectly. It's a real shame that through a combination of expensive repair bills and stringent MOTs, we all too often scrap perfectly good cars in the UK before they get anywhere near classic status.

 An excited fellow customer lady in a chocolate shop told us there was a park as fine as those in England in Mendoza. She then enquired as to our origins and was even more excited when we told her we were from England. Above are the gates, serving as a grand entrance to the park 
Autumn is just beginning in Argentina. The leaves are just starting to turn golden and brown.

The Mendoza region is famed for its wine, especially the Malbec grape. There are over 1,300 bodegas, or wineries, in the area. We hired bikes for the day and set off to taste some wine. 

Our first stop was an organic family-run bodega. We had a tour around the vineyard and bodega, which was surprisingly interesting and smelt deliciously of fermenting grapes and oaky wine barrels. We also had lessons on how to taste wine. Unfortunately, they didn't open their best bottles for the occasion so we kept our slurping to a minimum. We have bought a nicer bottle.

Wine tasting at the bodega

The rest of the people pictured above were on a bus tour. Following the wine tasting, we set off along with our map in search of a lunch spot for our cheese sandwiches and a spirits distillery. We found a gravel track to the river and five minutes later, Simon's bike had a puncture. Not to be deterred, we had a lovely lunch by the river, walked our bikes to the distillery and phoned for help. The affable Alfredo, the bike hire man, came to the rescue and changed the wheel whilst we were sampling spirits.

The distillery garden

The distillery is a recent Swiss venture producing grappas, brandies and liquors for export. We had another interesting tour around the building which had been impressively designed by an architect from Buenos Aires followed by a tasting of the products. This was much more generous than the bodega, we tasted at least 6 strong spirits followed by the same amount of liquors. We tottered out of here with a bottle of dulce de leche (toffee-like) liquor and made it safely back to the hire shop. We hadn't tasted a lot of wine by wine tour standards, but we had a great day out, got a feel for the area and enjoyed being back on bikes.