So it has been a while. We’re here over 8 months and the end of our travelhood is coming to a close. Ame is heading home March 3 and I will be heading back to the states May 19, but not arriving home until June 2, 2011. I will be one year out of NYC to the day and I am looking forward to my homecoming. This week Amy is visiting Iguazu with Courtney, and I am sure they will have some fun stories of their excursion. However, Amy and I took one last trip together after Patagonia with our friend, Alison, from England, who headed home last Wednesday. We called this our último viaje—we took our first trip to Bariloche with Alison, so it was only fitting that we took our last trip with her too.
Well what better last minute get-away than a trip to Argentina’s wine country—Mendoza. The three of us boarded an overnight bus on Tuesday evening and arrived bright and early on Wednesday ready to taste some wines. And while we truly did have good intentions of doing some mild trekking, the weather just did not cooperate with us. While walking towards the park it started to down pour (by down pour, I mean drizzle) so we took that as a sign from a higher power to get a jump start on the wine tasting.
The Vines, an US owned tasting room, opened at 3:00pm, so we arrived promptly at 3:15pm to start tasting some wines. We had a really nice server, Julien, who basically let us taste wines and chat the afternoon away. I think we were there for at least 3 hours and by the time we left, we were all feeling quite happy. We decided to be true tourists and go to an early dinner- 8:30. We went to a really great restaurant called Bistro Alice (or something like that) and we all had delicious meals. Ali and I continued to sample some wine, but Amy was well behaved and decided to hold off until our 9AM tour departure the next day.
Amy and I in the tasting room at The Vines
That’s right; we tasted our first set of wines at 10:30AM or as I like to call it: the breakfast of dignitaries. The tour we went on took us to four boutique vineyards. I liked the first one we went to the best. This is probably because not only did we taste 4 delicious wines, but we also got to taste delicious champagne! It’s sort of hard to top that even though all the other vineyards had great tasting wines too. We ended the tour at a vineyard were you could walk around and taste all the different varieties of grapes right from the vine…well at least that is what Juan our tour guide told us so we all went ahead and sampled under his instruction.
Breakfast at Dante Robino vineyard. Buy a bottle of their wine if you see it! Delicious!
Amy, Alison and Juan getting ready for lunch. Check out all the wine glasses on the table!!
Tasting grapes right off the vine, Alto Vista.
Juan was such a knowledgeable guide and he also turned out to be extremely hospitable and invited our entire group (7 of us) to his house the next day for an asado and a dip in his pool! So not only did we get to hang out by a pool all day we also got to enjoy a delicious traditional argentine BBQ our last day in Mendoza. We literally left from Juan’s right to the bus station. We headed home with full stomachs, new friends, and an overall great último viaje!
Sitting down for our asado at Juan's
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