We had a great time wine tasting in Mendoza and could easily go back there several times in the future.<\/p>\n
Many roads in the area have been transplanted directly from the south of France — they are lined with large old plane trees.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a welcome change from the wide open spaces that we’ve found in most of Argentina and I’m sure the immigrants who planted them thought so too.<\/p>\n
The Argentine government in the mid-19th century encouraged immigration from other countries because they made a decision to make the country be less Spanish.<\/p>\n
On our second full day in the Mendoza area, we drove to the Uco valley, about 50 km away, and visited two wineries.\u00c2\u00a0 The first one was Andeluna, a venture founded by Mr. Lay of Frito fame.\u00c2\u00a0 70% of their wine is exported to the US, and I hope to see it there.\u00c2\u00a0 But the wine was completely upstaged by the winery lunch, featuring five courses paired with various glasses.\u00c2\u00a0 The lunch was served by the chef, Pedro del Rio, who explained in a very detailed way everything that went into each of the dishes.\u00c2\u00a0 It was all very creative and tasty, but was much more interesting knowing some of the choices that were made for each ingredient.\u00c2\u00a0 The wines were fine, especially the last one, Passionata or something like that.\u00c2\u00a0 This visit was followed by a short drive to the Salentein winery, where a wine we’d had at Cueva de las Manos was from.\u00c2\u00a0 Many wines in Mendoza are good, but it seems that winery visits are actually all about the architecture.\u00c2\u00a0 Salentein had a large very modern building, with a nice art gallery where we hung out while sobering up for the drive back to Mendoza.\u00c2\u00a0 That night, we had a snack at a restaurant near our hotel where Sr. del Rio moonlights, tasting a few more of his creations.<\/p>\n
The third day was like the second, but was spent closer to town.\u00c2\u00a0 Lunch was at the Ruca Malen winery, and wasn’t nearly as noteworthy as the day before.\u00c2\u00a0 A visit to Catena Zapata winery followed, which won the grandiose movie set prize for our visit with its Mayan pyramid building.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently they started the architecture rivalry, building their creation in 1983.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 It could have been a 1930’s era Los Angeles gas station, expanded with a pantograph.<\/p>\n
We tasted a couple Malbecs, and bought a recommended $60 bottle, Catena Vinas “Angelica Lot 18 Malbec”, only sold at the winery, to drink at some point later.\u00c2\u00a0 We had room for dinner, and went to 1884 Francis Mallmann, a nice restaurant where we sat outdoors near their clay oven and barbeque, feasting on large portions of kid goat and beef.\u00c2\u00a0 It was located in the same building as a winery which had had a large fire two months earlier.<\/p>\n
Like we said earlier, if you come to Mendoza, and you ought to, make sure to stay at Casa Glebinias.\u00c2\u00a0 It is a wonderful little hotel and it lacks nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We had a great time wine tasting in Mendoza and could easily go back there several times in the future. Many roads in the area have been transplanted directly from the south of France — they are lined with large old plane trees.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a welcome change from the wide open spaces that we’ve found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apresmidi.net\/antarctica\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}