Wine Tasting, a pathetic attempt

Mendoza, Argentina

Mendoza (bottom left) circled in a Malbec color :)

I also circled Baires and Cafayate (top left, another wine area) to give perspective.

The main bulk of Wine Country in Argentina surrounds Mendoza and extends farther south towards patagonia. The region is known for its Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, but produces wines of all varieties and price ranges. Situated on a dry plane directly below the andes the area receives very little natural rainfall; most of the water is released when the clouds hit the other side of the andes from the Pacific. All of the water for irrigation comes from the runoff of snow and glaciers, making it very easy to control the amount of water in the soil and therefore, perfect for grapes. (if you plant grapes in soils with high water content the roots will begin to rot very quickly)

After looking at pictures online of the Mendoza route we were quite underwhelmed when we actually started driving around. (Below are some pictures of what it is supposed to look like)

Sooooo beautiful

Enchaaaaannting......

Instead of seeing this, we accidentally ended up driving by the YPF refinery and getting totally lost, so we saw this:

We were even on the road to chile for a little while...

It was also a huge dust storm the day we went to you couldn't even see the mountains. To make matters worse, after we finally did get on the wine route we discovered that all of the big name wineries (Terazas de Los Andes, Norton, Luigi Bosca, etc) only take people on paid tour groups, so you can't just drive up to a winery and taste wine.

After a few hours of exasperation, we finally found a different area that catered more to the individual tourist driving around sort of thing and found a few wineries that would let us taste. I thought the area was actually prettier and the smaller wineries there were more "charming" anyway.

Road in the Maypu area (east of Mendoza by 20 minutes).

Carts outside San Filipe, La Rural

More San Filipe

Young vines at Miguel Minni, an organic winery in the Maypu area.

Final Decision: Mendoza is beautiful, but you have to do a little research before you go, first and foremost decide whether you want to do a guided winery tour of the big wineries, or go to the Maypu area and do your own thing with the smaller ones. The best time to visit would be when there are leaves on the vines, which is from now, (Nov.) until Feb or March, because things look a bit barren otherwise.

One of the other really interesting things to throw in with your wine tasting is visiting olive oil farms / factories. We went to one, Laur, which is again near Maypu, and it was VERY interesting and incredibly cool. They have guided tours and many have the old machinery still in place so you can see both the old way of making oil and the new way.

Good wineries:

La Rural / San Filippe: Free tours and tasting, Maypu area, very cool wine museum

Miguel Minni: Maypu area, free tours and tasting, interesting organic winery

Terazas de Los Andes: looked beautify, can only go with reservation or tour

Laur Olivicol: Very old cool buildings, great tour of the old and new machinery