Satellite
  • Day 48

    Dragoman D2- Wine and Mr Hugo

    April 7, 2017 in Argentina ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    A group of 6 of us were dropped in front of Mr Hugo bikes in Maipu, one of the closest wine regions to the city of Mendoza. A jolly man in his 70's he gave us a bike each, and each was worse then the other. Brakes were poor, gears wouldn't change but they worked and we didn't have far to go, so they would do. Mr Hugo showed us a route on the map and we set off to our first winery. Less than 5km away disaster struck and James had a puncture. He cycled quickly back to Mr Hugo for a fresh bike, while we arrived at the first winery.

    Domiciano was a family run vineyard with pretty gray buildings. Its main vineyard lay 20km away, this being a show vineyard of sorts. We started with wine tasting, trying their chardonnay, shirah and a reserva malbec. All delicious and the guide gave such good description of the time and effort that goes in to produce each bottle. Their grapes are hand collected at night to stop them from fermenting early. They had recently won in an international competition, beating over 4400 other wines.

    As we were customers of Mr Hugo we had an extra wine to taste of our choice. The other people in the tasting were green with envy! Afterwards we had a small tour of the wine barrells, and walked through a small vineyard tasting the grapes. As we left we noticed that I now had a flat tyre. My quads had to kick in again after their training at Bariloche.

    We headed to our next destination, a wine museum. Full of old tools, eqiupment and massive barrels to explore. They let you exchange your ticket for a bottle of wine, so by combining our tickets we got a very nice red to be used after a particularly good day on the trip!

    Peckish by now we beelined to a beer garden via Mr Hugo where I picked up another bike. Good pizza and craft beer fuled us back up, and we had a 10% discount courtesy of Mr Hugo.

    Our last stop was a food craft store, again family run which made olive oil, tamponades, jams and liqours. We tasted them all and were very happy after the liqours, some such as the dulce de leche liqour we bought being 21%.

    Dropping our bikes back off with Mr Hugo he have us a lemonade to sober up before the bus back to Mendoza. A hug before leaving, his bikes may be bad but the deals we had everywhere due to Mr Hugo had been worth it. The whole day including the produce we had bought (a lot of alcohol) had come to cheaper than any full day tour on offer. Budget travelling at its best!
    Read more