Wine tastings in Mendoza Round 1 - Day 4

After a very refreshing night sleep, we were up by 7:30am for a wonderful breakfast cooked by Julia who owns the posada. Fresh fruit, bread, and made to order eggs were delicious.

Then, Marcelo (our private driver) - yes we are a bit spoiled arrives with our chariot at 9:20am on the dot to whisk us away for a tour. Okay, so you are probably thinking how much can a private driver cost - it ends up being about the same or cheaper than doing one of the bus tours with about 16 people from winery to winery and we even ended up on some private tours. Marcelo was definitely worth it!

Stop 1: Trapiche Winery
This beautiful winery was one of the larger wineries in Argentina - and has one area for premium wines and what are affectionately known as table wines. A lot of the family wineries were abandoned in the 1970s\1980s and bought by other families more recently. They have all been renovated, and many still use the original facilities and tools to make the wine. We had a great semi private wine tour, and tried 3 wines on a beautiful terrace (see below for pic). I tried a new wine called a Cabernet Franc there - very delicious. Basically, the Cabernet Sauvignon grape had a love affair with the Sauvignon Blanc grape and produced this - at least that sounds more interesting than plant reproduction. The picture below is of Trapiche's private railroad which would take the wine to Buenos Aires to be bottled. Back in the day to make some more money, the bottle makers in Buenos Aires would water the wine down to make more money. They even used menthol to create more liquid to put in bottles, but this resulted in the death of several people. So now there is a law that dictates that the wine must be bottled where it is made.

Stop 2: Tempus Alba
A smaller operation than Trapiche, but in equally as beautiful a setting. We did a wine tasting here. I had a rose malbec for the first time. Not the biggest fan, but definitely glad we tried it. Life is not too hard when you are gazing at the Andes mountains, looking over vineyards, and drinking Malbec. I almost needed a reality check.

Stop 3: Familia Zuccardi
Two wineries can certainly make you hungry. We headed over to Familia Zuccardi winery for a typical Argentine barbeque lunch of course accompanied by Malbec. The first course is also empanadas (Kyle's new favorite food) which are often filled with cheese, meat or onions. Next, salad, grilled vegetables, and tomato/olive oil were brought out. Then the parade of meat began. At first, we thought this was the only portion of meat - we were most certainly wrong.
Meat plate #1: regular sausage, blood sausage, pork
Meat plate #2: chicken, ribs
Meat plate #3: baby goat meat (that was the translation) and steak - Fiona was defeated at this point
Meat plate #4: veal, more steak (Kyle muscled through it and tried everything)
Then desert (which of course I saved room for) was an Argentine flan with a white cream sauce with candied grapes. YUM!
The view wasn't half bad either - in a greenhouse type room with beautiful windows overlooking the vinery.

Next, we headed over to the winery part for a tour (which was private.. yahoo). Kayla (from Chicago) was our tour guide - she was spending about 3 months down in Argentina as training to be a sommelier. We had a full tour of the property and saw each part of the wine making process in detail - Kyle went into paparazzi mode with his camera (those pics will come later). After the tour, another excellent tasting.

That night, Julia suggested we headed to Casa del Campo grill for dinner (the same owners as the place we had lunch the day before). We thought, great, we know where that was, but in fact it was at a different facility. We were befuddled why you would have one location open for lunch, and another location for dinner - but turns out they wanted a restaurant with room enough to have a party which was where dinner was at. The grill sounded like a made to order place which would be great after our meat marathon that was lunch.

Guess what was for dinner? Yep, the traditional Argentine barbeque with meat marathon. This tim,e, I knew to save room for dessert! Dinner was delicious, and another 2.5 hour affair, but hey we had nowhere else to be.. except to get into bed for our wine tasting round 2 the next day. Buenos noches!

Pictures:
View from the Trapiche terrace
The winery building at Trapiche, next to the private railroad tracks which are now out of use
Familia Zuccardi wine barrels
Beautiful view of the sky at Posada Verde Oliva