Day 3 Mendoza Wine Country – mostly food Porn!

What can I say, it’s not exactly what we thought but an experience all the same. We started our third day with rain so our outdoor adventure was cancelled as it was most likely snowing in the “pre-Andes” where we were supposed to hike on Wed. Instead we learned more about how to blog, ate lunch and enjoyed visiting Corazon De Sol which is owned by Dr. Revana. Dr. Revana also owns the Alexana winery in Dundee, OR which Ron and I helped find the property for, design the winery and we made his wines for him for the first 7 vintages at Penner-Ash until his winery was ready to receive fruit.

The crew at Corazon Del Sol was busy cleaning as they were expecting Dr. Revana to arrive this weekend. We appreciated that their winemaker Luciano took the time to come out and say hi as we tasted thru the wines. It was fun to reminisce about the harvests Luciana spent working for Alexana and talk about all the different wines he is making here in Mendoza. One of my favorite wines (besides the Pinot) that we made at Alexana was a GSM from Walla Walla, WA – so to be able to taste the Argentinian equivalent was lovely. Here in Mendoza there isn’t much Pinot noir grown and most of it is for Rosé.

After our tasting we headed off to dinner at La Morada. We were seriously thinking we’d had enough wine and were still full from lunch so maybe we should cancel our dinner plans. Since the driver had already been scheduled we decided to go ahead and just get it over with! 🙄

We headed over to a much smaller and more intimate restaurant off the property. When we arrived it was pouring down rain but we were greeted by a warm fire and a drink that is similar to a Negroni but slightly different with gin, vermouth and we think Aperol. Maybe my bar tending friends can comment and help us determine what the third ingredient was! Since it wasn’t bitter like a typical Negroni – it was much more enjoyable (in my opinion – maybe not so for Ron!). We were also happy to encounter other diners there – it wasn’t just us again eating in a completely empty room! Albeit it was almost 9 by the time we were seated. Dinner was this amazing leg of lamb that had been slow cooked in a wood over for 20 hours, along with two very tasty sides of cheese and fresh vegetables that had also been cooked in the wood oven. Our waiter spoke no English but was quite concerned we weren’t getting enough to eat. The pantomime of the leg of lamb, the age of the lamb and where it had come from was very entertaining. At the end of the evening as we were getting ready to leave we asked in our horrible Spanish if he could call our driver for us. He made us laugh when he said, “Better Call Sal” – how American culture has influenced not only the music that is being played at all the restaurants but also TV shows. We did learn he LOVES Breaking Bad!