Mendoza and Wine Country

We were picked up at Mendoza airport after a rather bumpy plane ride from Buenos Aires – and we all know how much I love a bumpy flight! As we travelled from the airport to Mendoza we learned a lot about the upcoming election and all the issues the country is dealing with. The first and very obvious issue from the long lines for gas is fuel. We saw trucks lined up for miles. Our understanding is the government is requiring the gas stations to sell gas at a set price which is very low at this time. In turn the gas stations have decided to hang to the bulk of their fuel until after the November 19th elections – hence the hours to days wait in line for gas.

We also saw the impact of the most recent Zonda, a very warm wind that had just blown thru Mendoza area and toppled many trees, taken down power lines and caused quite a bit of damage. As we drove towards wine country the damage was, thankfully, not as severe but the resulting weather after a warm Zonda is to become quite unpredictable. We would soon experience the temperature swings from warm and sunny to quite chilly and rainy.

We were lucky in that the last warm day was the same day we had booked a horse back ride up into the mountains. It was a beautiful day to be out in the Andes. Our guide, “Danny” was a local and a true gaucho – at least he looked the part. He made us snack of the traditional empanada and of course a bottle of wine from this region.

We headed back to The Vines of Mendoza where we are staying and were off to our first tasting experience. Boy were we in for a surprise! When we arrived we gave our name and a couple that would join us on the tour of the winery, Gimenez Rilli, recognized our name as they have enjoyed Penner-Ash wines for many years and had lived in Oregon at one point. We had a nice walk thru the very rocky vineyards and then were seated for our lunch/tasting. Little did we know this experience would take well over 3.5 hours! Ron was getting hungry and the pace of the food and wine delivery was not the most efficient! Yet again we were served a very large piece of beef with the obligatory potatoes and beet root. We are noticing a theme here! Though the presentation of the calamari did make me laugh!

Sorry for the winery photos but my friends in the industry will appreciate the use of the concrete “egg” and the huge cluster size of the white grape Torrontes. From the looks of the clusters – bloom is about 10 days to two weeks away but the real concern is the current cool conditions and potential rain.

We finished lunch around 4 and it seemed like we turned around and headed back out for dinner. We arrived for dinner at 8 pm, enjoyed a great BEEFLESS dinner and some lovely wines from Rope but were the only guests in the restaurant! We were on our last course and finishing up around 9:30 when three couples walked in to START their dining experience. We are not at all adapting to the dining timelines here!