Wine Drinking 101 in Mendoza

28th January 2013

 

Today has been a brilliant day! Well, maybe afternoon. It would been a ‘day’ if David didn’t insist on washing his underpants in the toilet sink. Despite my irritable sighs during my writing of the previous day’s adventures and extreme eye rolling, we finally left after noon.

 

Catching a local bus to Maipu, a wine growing village just outside of Mendoza, we were pretty pleased o have saved ourselves a bomb. Most hostels were offering wine tours for 400 pesos, equivalent of £60, whereas we expected to pay 150 pesos for our self guided activities, equivalent of £15.

 

Getting off the bus at the stop outside Mr Hugo’s, we paid thus for a rented bike and in return, we got a map, discounts for some wineries and a breakdown service I definitely needed when I found my bike to have a flat tyre at one of the wineries. I could have told you that I felt ‘let down’ and had the ‘air come out of me’ or perhaps I needed the ‘pressure’… Ok ok, I’ll stop now. But they came and replaced my bike with a new one.

 

So off we pedalled and we had the bright idea to go to the furthest winery we could because having a drink at all of the wineries and then having to pedal directly back would be a bad idea..wait… Instead of writing about it, why don’t I tell you about it? Here’s my vlog on wine drinking in Mendoza!

 

Great video isn’t it?

 

If you are interested, the wine we drank there were:

 

Balbec

Balbec

Sauvignon Blanc

Torrientes – Chardonnay

Rose

Cabernet Sauvignon

 

And plenty more!

 

We did learn a lot in the wine tour in one of the wineries but we were pretty thirsty for some wine and we kept asking when the wine tasting was going to be…

 

But again, as I sat on the terrace at the last winery I was in, with an extremely large wine glass, I felt very content as the winery played some plink plonk music and I sat watching the Andes loom spectacularly overhead. Maybe it was the 20th glass of wine taking but I felt all was right with the world.

 

However, we realised we would be late to return the bikes if we didn’t press on so off we rolled, realising our inability to turn one leg with the other after that said 20th and cycled out onto the road. This time, I forgot that the traffic drives on the other side of the road, oops! Sorry driver! I know why you don’t like cyclists!

 

Meanwhile, enjoy the pictures!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And what did we do that night? Well, apart from free wine again at the hostel, I got myself an Argentinian haircut. But at that time, I pretended to be Australian… I’ll tell you why later.

 

and then I came back to a delicious meal prepared by Auston. Risotto with squash and chicken rolled in vegetables and ham. Yum yum yum. And what did you think we washed it down with…yep, more wine. Our livers are going to hate us.

 

Needless to say, I slept REALLY well that night…