Mendoza Vineyard Tour

So, penguin vaguely out of my system - well not really but never mind - it's off to check out some of the vineyards in the area and that means tasting of course!

First up, Dante Robino, a large scale producer of wine (around 1 million liters a year.  

First thing to note is that pretty much every vineyard covers their vines with these Kevlar nets to protect them from hail.  I don't think I've seen that before.

How they used to make wine........

And how they do it today.......

And of course, where it ends up......

I'd like to point out that I'd been playing with the settings on my camera again, hence the blurriness, although I will admit that I was feeling a little blurry around the edges at this point.

Overall rating of Dante Robino, a solid B-, nothing spectacular but really nothing I'd be buying in cast quantities and taking home with me.

Next stop (asadly there were only two vineyards on this tour) was Vistantes, a boutique grower producing only 300,000 liters a year.

Interesting thing here (if you like wine) is that these guys are growing carmenere grapes, I think currently the only ones doing it in Argentina.   Two more fun facts:

Carmenere was thought extinct until a few years go when it was discovered in Chile, it was originally believed to have been wiped out by a disease in France.

Malbec gets it's name from French meaning "bad taste".  These grapes don't grow well in the French environment but thrive in the dry climate of Argentina and thus produce a much better quality wine.

Vistantes gets a good solid A from me.  Everything we tasted was excellent, full of flavor without being overpowering.  Big plus here is that the English speakers got a separate tour to everyone else so since there was only three of us we basically had a little private tour and tasting - generous pours!  The only downside is that I'm not sure how much they actually export so getting some down the road might be a little tricky.

Last stop was a factory making olive oil using the old processes, I didn't really take many pictures there as I wasn't really concentrating by that point in time.  I do remember that it was pretty good stuff though.

Got back to the hotel around 20:15 and decided to wander out for dinner, of course then realizing, as I had the night before if I'm honest, that the Argentinians don't start dinner until 10pm at the latest.  Oh well, I stopped off at a microbrewery, had a burger and a couple of beers and tottered off back to the hotel.  I'm really suffering on this trip I swear!

Tomorrow, more mountains.  Small confession, I'm tired of mountains a little bit but soldier on.