Los viñedos...

What more is there to say about drifting out of reality and in to the tranquility that always presents itself in the form of a vineyard, a grape, a glass, or a bottle - sometimes, all together!

I've had the privilege of spending some time in the Napa and Sonoma wine regions in California, thanks to my friend's girlfriend being unable to take the trip at the last minute, and had made a short visit to Mendoza, Argentina soon thereafter, and enjoyed my time in each place, thoroughly, and for different reasons. However, the recent trip I was lucky enough to make was with Carey, Melanie, and Lau, and we did it up! If you back away the accommodations - I figured, let's spend money on things that matter, like the food and the wine, and not the bed, so we stayed in a hostel (it turned out to be great, but a little 'below' the expectations of the ladies) - there wouldn't be much to change from having an explosively good time in Mendoza, and given the particularities of all of us, that is saying a lot...

For starters, I was in no mood to drop big bucks on a 90-minute flight, and I thought it would be good for both Carey and Melanie to experience the bus system of Argentina, as it really is something that takes a little adjusting to, but it totally normal for people who are here. A bit of a background on this - in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the government sold of its national interests in many industries, including the railway system, which included operable trains (ala Amtrak) running from Buenos Aires to the rest of the country. The network may not have been al-encompassing, but it existed... After the national sell-off, the railway system (beyond the standard freight and commuter systems) was effectively closed, so bus companies (super-luxe classes through school bus style) began sprouting up to fill the void. This is now the primary means of inter-nodal mass transportation in Argentina (and I would imagine for the majority of South America), so I figured it would be fun to experience together/be a witness to the fact that both Carey and Melanie spent evenings on a bus (Lau has already done this, so she's accustomed to it).

So, we left Baires on a Wednesday evening, the same day that Carey arrived (she had a whirlwind of a first 2 weeks down here!), traveling on AndesMar (you know, like, from the Andes to the Ocean, like, Argentina) for the 13 hour, overnight trip almost directly west to Mendoza. The fun fact about this trip is that there's a street in Baires that travels all the way from the Casa Rosada, to the Chilean border, and has been documented as the longest, single road in the world - this could also just be the Argentine chest-pumping and self-fulfilling story-telling... The trip was relatively uneventful, as we a bevy of meds onhand to help potential sleeping issues, but was highlighted by an incredible game of bingo, something AndesMar does prior to serving the dog-meat slop they pretend is a dinner (I can say this, I actually ate it, unlike the people I was traveling with, who just laughed and made silly faces while I ate my 'dinner')... Needless to say, I won the bingo match on a bus full of people, but not before Melanie called out Bingo after the 6th number called, thinking it was a 'normal' game of bingo. Really?! We're in Argentina, nothing's normal... Our bingo consists of getting a 4x4 board of numbers totally filled by the numbers that are called, so you need 16 (maybe less if you have a wild-card and/or duplicates) numbers before you can win - silly Melanie! I won a nice thermos, which was immediately caribinered to the backpack...

Little did we know that the weekend we were to have in Mendoza was over Labor Day (how naive), so some of the vineyards would not be open in observance of the holiday. Labor Day here is the same as in the States, but the concept of having a day off to celebrate the work has a different meaning in the US, where people are only ever thinking about work, and here, where they think about everything but work. Alas, I digress... In planning the wine-touring, we opted to have an 'adventure' day in between, which took care of scheduling the tours with the places we wanted to visit and giving us a chance to take a break from the consumption. Within about 2 minutes of getting in to town, we were already running behind schedule - we had a big day of wine touring and giddiness that needed to start, immediately...

The first vineyard, Azul, located in the Uco Valley, was a boutique winery with an annual production of about 70,000 bottles. This could have been our favorite vineyard, so having at the beginning was both a blessing and disappointment. We got a nice tour of the actual production, as the tasting was done in the same rooms as the stainless fermentation barrels. Prior to moving down here, I has part of a wine club that sent me Argentine wines from Mendoza, and I had had the chance to taste some Azul in the past, so visiting the vineyard was a nice perk. We bounced around, jungle juice (90% fermented wine from the barrel) in hand, from bodega to bodega, until we got to O'Fournier for our lunch (it was close to 3p). The meal we had was delectable, and prepared by a chef who the girls later claimed not to trust - she's the wife of the vineyard owner, of Spanish descent, and stands about 5 feet, 100 lbs... tiny! This is why the girls did not trust her, but, her food spoke for itself. Rich, soft, and perfectly paired with the 'house' wines - here, it has a different connotation. After the travel, the wine, and at this point, the food, we all needed a little rest before something that evening. We ended up heading to a little spot for dinner, where we got the 'in' table on the street, right in front. Needless to say, the four of us barely spoke a word to eachother, as all our heads were on swivels (as is customary when eating on the street in front of a popular restaurant) the entire nite. What we did chuckle about was the disaster of a service experience we had, as orders were confused, forgotten, or just gotten plain wrong. Welcome to Argentina! However, to defend the Argentine's, the orders had replacement items, cooking suggestions, and 'created' items, so it's not entirely their fault...

The next morning, we woke up good and early for 'adventure' day, which included horseback riding (cabalgatas) - a first for me - and hiking/repelling. Resting in the foothills of the Andes, the adventure company we went through had a 'base camp' sitting on a gorgeous lake abutting the mountains, from which all tours departed. The horseback riding was amazing, as we were just walking through the mountains, with only the picturesque landscape surrounding us. A lot of my motivation to climb aboard a horse was a function of Melanie's visit, as she has always wanted for me to get in to horses (she's a professional rider, seriously), so her visit was the perfect confluence of reasons to saddle up. I'm now hooked!

After lunch, a criollo meal at 'base camp,' we went for a 3 hour hike up the hills/mountains, that was bisected by a little waterfall/rock repelling - sweet! During the hike, we made friends with our 24 y/o guide, a native of Mendoza, and got to see some 'wild' horses running through the foothills - wait, what?! Apparently, the horses belonged to the same group we had 'hired' to take us riding, but to see horses, in a natural environment like that is still pretty cool, and not something you necessarily expect when setting off on a hike. By the end of the day, we were pooped, but we had a HUGE dinner ahead of us - maybe the biggest/fanciest one of the entire trip.

1884 Francis Mallmann is a restaurant located within an old building that was formerly the bodega of Escorihuela Gascón, a prominent label in Mendoza. The restaurant, by all accounts, is amazing. It was strongly suggested, and referred to as the nicest in Mendoza, so naturally, we had to do it - when we walked in, we were, hands down, the youngest people in there - by at least 10 years. Now that we're pushing 30, 'old' people don't seem that old anymore, despite how young I may still feel. Aside from the snobbish response I received from the sommelier (his name is Victor) when asking about a flight of champagne, service was impeccable and the food, delicious. We made the affair a bit more 'shared' with a specific rotation of plates that each of us ordered, being sure not to duplicate - this gave us the chance to sample 8 different 'courses' but was not supremely successful, as the last rotation would always get cold food... Full and drunk, we headed back to the hostel to turn in for the nite and prepare for our second day of wine tasting - Lujan de Cuyo was next...

This was a day of big hitters - Achaval Ferrer, Vistalba, Carmelo Patti, and Altavista - with lunch at La Bourgogne, the restaurant at Vistalba... Achaval Ferrer is a 'modern' vineyard that has assumed some 'forward' wine-making techniques, all of which are implemented to produce terrific wines. Lunch was absolutely delicious, on the grounds of what felt like a monastery, however, the building was clearly not that old, and afterward, I think we were all ready to take a breather, but I pushed us on to hit up at least 2 more vineyards, neither of which were really all that memorable (a few stories, some pictures, yada yada). The girls were counting the minutes until their massages at the Spa at the Park Hyatt, and I was up for getting some more wine at Vines of Mendoza with a colleague who works there/trying to work a business angle. Dinner was relatively uneventful, as we chowed on sushi at the bar at the Park Hyatt, down the hall from the spa, and then headed back to the hostel, where we'd get a nice nite's sleep before hopping on the 7 hour train, thru the Andes, en route to Santiago de Chile...