Today we have a wine tour. It's not been too easy communicating with Bamba to organise our trip because we don't always have wifi. They're very last minute. We have only a couple of days in each place so if we don't get in touch with them soon enough to tell them where we're staying we may miss a tour. We'd received the email last night to let us know the tour today starts at 2:30pm so we had the whole morning to check out of our twin bed room and move into a 6 bed dorm. It costs us 220 pesos to sleep in the twin room (on bunk beds) and 70 pesos to sleep in the 6 bed dorm (on bunk beds) oh and we found out that in 'Mendoza Internacional hostel' if you pay in reception it's a lot more expensive than booking with hostel world.
There's not a lot to do in Mendoza. The towns nice but we walked through that yesterday. They have plenty of parks but they're more like squares of patchy grass covered in cigarette butts oh and strange looking fountains so we decided to head for the post office and send some gifts home.
South America so far has been so different to Asia. In Asia they are so prepared for tourism. We took for granted the amount of locals their that could speak English. In Mendoza, Argentina we couldn't even find a postcard!.... Nobody at the post office spoke English so we went armed with some vocab.... Over 900 pesos they wanted! That's over £100. The parcel weighed 550g. We didn't send the parcel and headed back to the hostel.
The wineries tour bus picked us up at 3pm and drove us through the beautiful countryside surrounded by mountains. It looked like something from a film. The tour man didn't speak much English so spoke in Spanish the whole way there. We were trying to listen to pick up words we knew and to learn but after a bit it starts hurting your head so we switched off.
We arrived at a posh looking winery. We jumped off the bus and were given a tour around the grounds which included a talk on how they produced their wine. The guide here spoke English too so we were told first in Spanish then English. The majority on the tour were 40+ and Spanish speaking. One lady said she was from Australia but spoke with a standard English accent and had a pointy nose. She said to me 'when do we get to taste these wines?' She made some reference to not wanting the history. I asked her if she went the wineries in Australia. She scoffed and said 'there's not many wineries we haven't been' as we were speaking we were in the sparkling wine production area so I asked her if she's been Chandon in Victoria. The cheeky mare said 'I was in my 20s when I visited Victoria and who in their 20s care for wineries?' Erm me?! Finally we headed to the tasting room. We were given a glass of red, Bosega Dante Robino Malbec. It was really easy to drink. I don't drink red (partly because I feel like a vampire with the red glass in my hand and because I don't like the after taste). This wine had no aftertaste. The next glass did, so Lee's glass got topped up! The lady came over and said 'what do you think of the wine?' I told her I liked the first but not the second. She replied with 'really? I found them completely lacking. When you've tried as much wine as I have you appreciate a good wine' she started rambling on about the smell matching the taste and in Paris.... She finished with but this wine will be good 'for you'.
Me and Lee bought the bottle I liked and avoided miss pointy nose for the rest of the day.
The next winery we drove to was a much smaller, traditional winery. The tour was split between English speaking and Spanish speaking guests. The English were lead away from the group. We were shown their vines, the crushing area, the cellar. They still had the barrel where people used to stand in to squash the grapes. It was a little bit too old for me to climb in so I didn't take the risk incase it broke.
When we got to the wine tasting part I didn't like the reds. Lee's glass got topped up again. The guide took us to the final room where we could buy wine. We were introduced to the owner of 'Cavas de don arturo' and was told about a wine he had prepared, that took years, for his daughters wedding. He was selling the few bottles remaining for 250 pesos. We were told that in Europe this bottle is on sale for 250 euros. (The bottle I bought at the other winery cost 36 pesos. That's about average for a bottle of wine in Argentina). The owner let us try their more superior Malbec that the lady said isn't usually for tasting. This one was 75pesos per bottle. This one tasted nice (even I liked it). She said to Lee if you like this one you'll love the limited edition one. We bought the limited edition. It's Lee's wine to take home
from this winery. Next we were took to an olive place called 'Pasrai' where they made extra virgin olive oil. We didn't buy anything there but now i know why people put things in the bottles in the kitchen... rosemary, garlic and chilli flavoured oil. The last stop was at a famous church in Mendoza. This church was one of the few buildings left standing after the earthquake, along time ago, so it is a special church to Mendoza. It looked beautiful from the outside and the court yard in the middle looked like something out of a fairytale.
After a brief look around we headed back to our hostel. The sun was setting so the views were beautiful from the bus window.
After we were dropped off I grabbed a jacket (it gets a little nippy at night) and we headed into the town for some tea.
We settled on an Italian looking place. The man gave us the menu and really didn't look very happy when we asked for water with our meal... We gave in and ordered a mini bottle of red. It was Malbec but it was horrible. Not for me or Lee. We eat up and headed back. We went to the room and watched a film on the iPad. Just as I'd got back in bed our roomies came in. 2 beds in the 6 bed dorm were empty and the other 2 were the English couple from the pizza night. We had a little catch up then we all called it a night.