Day 39 - Wineries

Our tour picked us at the hotel and went around the city picking up others until we had a full compliment of 17. Off to our first winery - Trapiche - while our guide explained points around the city and the countryside. He said that the area is semi-desert and Mendoza and Maipu are oases in this dry land. The vast farms and vineyards grow using irrigation with water from the Andes. He also commented that the biggest "crop" in the area is oil (petroleum, not wine or olives).

The Trapiche winery is one of the best-known and has won many awards. We took a tour through the museum where we saw the old production machinery and learned that "trapiche" is the basket that holds the grapes when they are pressed. Trapiche produces over five million liters of wine a year and exports much of that. We tasted three of their products, a white Cabernet Sauvignon, a pure Malbec, and a blend. All good! After the obligatory stop at the winery store, we continued to our next winery.

The Sinfin winery is a much smaller one. It produces about 300,000 liters per year and has another vineyard where it produces about 1.2 million liters. It has modern stainless steel tanks rather than the oak and concrete tanks we saw at Trapiche. Our tour was quite short and we moved to the tasting. Again, we tasted three wines, a white Cab, a Bonarda, and a straight Malbec. The Bonarda is a little-known grape from the Segovia region in Europe. We liked the Trapiche wines better. Our winery guide spent much time explaining the wines and what foods they go with. Finally, she brought out a "mystery " wine in an unlabeled bottle and had us guess the blend. It turned out to be a blend of Malbec, Shiraz. Merlot, and Cabernet Franc - a grape none of us had heard of. It was good. Then she took us downstairs to the cellar and wine shop where she set up their whole line of wines, olive oil, and grappa.

On to our next winery, Santa Julia is a very large producer, much bigger than Trapiche. Here we stopped at one of their restaurants to eat lunch. They served a delicious three-course meal with one of their wines with each course. A white Torrontes (white) with the first course (a cream cheese, prosciutto, tomato on flat bread). A Tempranillo (red) with the lasagna and a spumante (sparkling white) with the ice cream and fruit dessert. It was a great meal but our palates were a bit dulled from the previous tasting to be very discriminating about the wines.

It was interesting to watch the social interplay during the tour. Among the 17 of us there were Argentines, Brazilians, Australians, a guy from England, a couple from Denmark, and us. As the tour went on, and especially over lunch, we got pretty chummy. Conversations crossing back and forth over the table in Spanish, Portuguese, and English with the Brasilians chatting in English and me in Spanish.

After lunch, we had an olive oil tasting. Besides producing wine, the farm produces olive oil in at least 10 varieties. They set up three for us to taste and a guide explained the fine points of oil production. They grow 97 varieties of olives. Some oils they refine using only one variety to produce distinctive flavors. Others they blend all 97 to produce the oil. The three blends we sampled ranged from smooth to intense. She told us that the intense blend comes from early harvest (still green) olives, the classic comes from mid harvest (red) olives, and the smooth from late harvest (black) olives. We could definitely taste the difference between the smooth and intense oils. After three hours at the restaurant, we boarded the bus back to Mendoza as the conversations continued. It was a great tour!Read more