Suggestions for a vacantion touring the best wineries in Mendoza with specific recommendations where to visit and stay.
Mendoza
Here are three good reasons to go to Argentina in 2008.
First, the cost of living once there will bring a smile to even the most-budget conscious traveller’s face.
Second, the people are welcoming, educated and keen to make friends.
Third, despite the enormous beauty of the country, international tourism is still in its infancy.
Add in a good climate and fantastic food and wine and you’ll realise that this is very much a place to get to before the hordes descend.
If you want to learn more about their flourishing wine industry travel to Mendoza – the vinopolis of Argentina. With over 180,000 acres under cultivation, producing 1.3 million tonnes of grapes, this is the home of many familiar brands from your supermarket shelves:- Argento, Norton, Santa Julia – they all come from Mendoza’s 16 wine-producing departments. At 33º latitude here you are roughly the same distance from the equator as are the premier grape growing regions of France, Italy and California.
As you drive to the vineyards you begin to wonder if some sort of trompe d’oeil trick is being played. How on earth can this barren lunar landscape possibly produce wine? This, you see, is a true geographical desert with less than eight inches of rainfall a year. So how does that equate with this region of Argentina producing the fifth largest volume of wine on earth?
For the answer one has to look skyward– 6000 metres skywards, to be precise. The towering Andes that dominate the skyline hold the key. Mendoza, you see, sits in the run-off of these formidable mountains, making the soil rich and fertile, and by using a sophisticated irrigation system Mendozan growers engineer the quantity of water to produce just the right balance of sugars in the grape which so crucially affects the quality of the wine.
Clever stuff. Man manipulating nature for the very best of reasons.
DISCOVER MALBEC
It’s worth going to Mendoza just for the joy of drinking Malbec – a magnificent wine from the grape that originated in Bordeaux but is now virtually unique to Argentina. It produces a beautiful spicy dark red wine that perfectly complements the succulent steaks and BBQ grills you find at the ‘sados’ of Argentina.
An equally attractive incentive to head for Argentina is that, unlike in South Africa, California or France, when you’re on a wine tour, in Mendoza you don’t feel like a tourist, just a guest.
At the winery of the Familia Zuccardi you can be treated to a horseback tour of the 4000 acre estancia by the vineyard manager who will talk in loving detail about the wine growing process from start to end.
After a ride round the vines it’s back to the workers' kitchen where the elderly grandmother will proffer bread and home-cured ham before we started the serious business of wine tasting.
A visit to Bodega Salentein in the Valle de Uco in the south-west of Mendoza is equally fascinating. With the help of a not-inconsiderable £50 million investment this winery has built what is essentially a large hole in the ground. It’s a hole with meaning though, because it allows the grapes to be fed into the machinery from above, and so, with the help of gravity, there is less chance of them being handled, moved and bruised. It’s just one of many impressive technological advances being used in Argentina to make quality wine in bulk for the world market.
In common with a few other wineries this Bodega runs a guest house. Posada Salentein is set in woodland and offers trekking, fishing and four-wheel drives or horse rides into the mountains. Facilities are comfortable and the on-site cook will rustle up an excellent dinner.
One of the finest Malbecs you can try comes from the Catena vineyard, which dates back to 1902. Its owner, Nicolas Catena, is another wine pioneer and a truly remarkable character.
A native of Mendoza, Catena, a lecturer in economics and third generation vineyard owner, decided a few years ago to build a new winery to produce premium quality wines, mainly for export, using the most advanced technology available.
While admiring the distinctive French ‘chateaux’, he wanted his new Catena Zapata winery to express its unique South American mountainous setting. He searched the continent for the most appropriate style, and found it on visiting Tikal, in Guatemala. Architect Pablo Sánchez Elía was appointed to build the resultant Mayan temple. The spectacular result opened in April 2001. It’s as interesting to visit architecturally as for the excellent wines you’ll be offered.
The city of Mendoza is a curious place. At one turn, it’s a tacky, haphazard; impoverished city of more than one million inhabitants, on the other it’s teeming with life, and awash with markets and bars that remind you are definitely in South America. Despite its quirks it has a curious charm. Decades separate it and the sophisticated Parisian-style streets of Buenos Aires, but in many ways, this is the real Argentina.
Learn more about the region and its tourism.
