January 6-9
I promise this is the last winery posting for a long time.
Clos de Chacras – We really enjoyed this tour/tour guide which took us into their very cool cellar and the wines were also great. We bought a blend from their premium line that we drank later that night that we loved. Look at the awkward thing that is going on between my arm and Krystal’s arm:
Osadia de Crear – This was some of the best food we ate our entire time in wine country. I ordered a much needed salad while the guys started with a “pork taco” but there was no tortilla so we’re not really sure what the idea was here. Despite the not entirely accurate naming – it was incredibly delicious. Also Pipe and I had the most amazing braised short ribs. What – you thought I was going to make it through an entire meal without red meat?!?! We’re in Argentina, people.
Carmelo Patti – The enologist of the people!! That’s what a magazine article said about this guy. This is an old man that basically makes wine in his really huge garage. Then he ages it for 5-7 years or so before he sells it because he wants people who buy his wine to be able to drink it right away and he doesn’t trust that people age wine properly. He also gave us tons of random wine facts – for example, if you are opening a bottle of wine and the cork is stuck, you can put a flame from a lighter right up to the bottle outside the cork and it will loosen it. He also stated that if you break the cork, it’s not the cork’s fault – it is either the wrong opener or user error. Also, if you are going to store wine in a cellar, you should take the wrapping off the top so you can check out the cork and make sure it isn’t cracked. If it’s cracked, it won’t age properly. Also Krystal thought he was charming. He was.
Alta Vista – this tour was cool and the tasting room was really neat. The sparkling rose was fancy and delicious. Look at all the awards they won – they must be delicious!!
Zuccardi – This place was not that cool. It is one of the bigger wineries in the region and the wines we tasted were crappy. That said, we met a few cool people from the US – Tony and Gabe from LA who do a ton of traveling and were fun to compare notes with. We also met two college buddies from Atlanta and Minneapolis who had just finished climbing Aconcagua Mountain. Reminder from two posts ago that this is the highest mountain outside of Asia. They said it took them like 20 days or something crazy. Really incredible (but also I’m glad it wasn’t me).
Carinae – this one was meh. It was ok. I don’t have much more to say and neither Michael nor I have pictures, so… we’ll leave it at that.
Here in the middle of all of these wineries was a Sunday. We planned an “active day” where we were going to go bike riding or do something other than drinking that morning. We did go for a run… it wasn’t quite an active “day” as much as an active hour and a half. On my run I did see that there was 8pm mass in the town square. You read that right. 8pm. So we went and it was something else. We got there about 3 minutes late and by the time we arrived, there were already about 30 people standing outside the church. It was packed and people were spilling out. So we stood outside with them. The church had speakers outside – apparently this is a regular thing. Here’s a picture after mass and a picture of the couple that brought their dog to mass. Apparently they knew it was an outdoors kind of thing.
Achaval Ferrer – this is the favorite winery of the entire trip for all four of us. It had cool art:
And a really great guide, Felipe. Felipe was super high energy and did a great tour along with cool tastings. It was the only time we had tastings from the barrel:
And Felipe had super cool Led Zeppelin tattoos on his arm:
Most importantly, Achaval Ferrer had the best wines – super delicious and now my sister has the good fortunate of receiving a few more bottles to put in her basement with the rest of small collection of wine and beer she’s babysitting for us while we travel. Thanks, Biz!
Matervini – after the winemaker at Achaval Ferrer sold his winery, he opened a new one next door – Matervini. Obviously the same style and quality, so once again delicious wines. Plus another great tour courtesy of Augustine. One thing that I thought was super interesting was that the winemaker is not allowed to put his name on any Matervini wine, per his deal when he sold Achaval Ferrer. However, he’s allowed to hang his daughter’s art, which is shown throughout the winery. So the Achaval name can only be found in her signature on the paintings.
RJ Viña Dos – we had a chocolate tasting here. The tour wasn’t that interesting and we were all dragging, but it was fun to do something different.
Bonfanti – We were still pretty exhausted when we showed up to this one and we arrived an hour early, but the guy took us in anyway, and it ended up being a really interesting tasting. He would ask us questions about what tasted or what we thought and then would always tell us we were wrong. So it was hilarious, but still somehow an interesting and fun tasting.
Familia Cassone – a very small family winery. We loved the tour and really enjoyed the wines. They seemed excited that we had found them. And then we saw the coolest thing – they were bottling and it was awesome. I could have stood and watched them for hours.
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_5934.movEl Enemigo – this was our last stop before heading back to Santiago. We ate lunch here and did the tour. The name means enemy, but it was explained to us that they are referencing not an external enemy but your internal enemies: doubt, fear, etc. Also, the entire winery is based off Dante’s Divine Comedy with different parts of the winery depicting Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. They have a ton of really neat art to depict the three, including this super cool book in inferno. It is one of the old accounting books that was left on the property when the current owners bought it. It is an accounting ledger and on the left side as you turn each page is the ledger and on the right side, the artist painted/sketched a different piece of art in different colors and styles. It was really cool. Note: James Blunt’s full album was playing in hell.
Also look at this super cute kid space:
The lunch there was also incredible. Their theme was that if you don’t like it, they’ll replace it. They kept saying – don’t be afraid to try something new, we’ll replace it if you don’t like it. And they meant it – throughout the meal, they came back to make sure we didn’t want anything replaced. The food was so good, though, that there was no need to replace anything. Great way to end our time in Mendoza.
Then the long drive back to Santiago over the Andes.
A huge thank you to Phil and Krystal for coming out and visiting! We had an incredible time! Next stop: detox in the desert!