For our last day we had made reservations for another punishing round of wineries and a long lunch – this time all in Lujon de Cuyo. First we headed off to Fabre Montmayou’s winery to pick up some their highly regarded wine. This place doesn’t do the full tourist thing and the company we’d hired to take us around had never visited here before. Thankfully this stop didn’t have any wine tasting (it was only 9:45am!),
but nevertheless, we got to see the wine making facilities and also the opportunity to buy a bottle of their Gran Vin, which, based on a number of reviews, was one of Argentina’s most highly rated wines – at around AUD$40 per bottle it would have been great to get some more, but alas we were already approaching the maximum weight limits on our luggage – so no more wine (for now).
Next stop was a relatively new winery called MaterVini (Mother of All Wine) which was recently founded by Santiago Achaval one of the founding partners and wine makers at Achaval Ferrera (for those of you who don’t know Achaval Ferrera is one of the most famous fine wine makers in Argentina). As it turns out today was the day the winery had organised a mobile bottling plant to bottle up their newest vintage of wines. This was very fortuitous for us as the owner was on the premises and we had the opportunity to meet him and talk a little bit about his new winery and his wine philosophy. Again, the wine geeks in us got a little excited at this point.
After tasting a number of the wines, we agreed that his new venture was definitely a good thing. Despite our impending luggage issue we decided to buy another bottle. By this stage we’d had a bit to drink and needed to get some food in our bellies. Luckily for us, lunch was just down the road.
For lunch we’d booked the degustation menu and wine pairing at the Casarena winery. If we hadn’t mentioned many times already before, it has to be said again, this is one of the most stunning wine regions in the world – the views across the vineyards to the high Andes are awesome. We had our table set up with the most beautiful views and, again, the food didn’t disappoint. We were having such lovely weather too, so today, despite it being middle of winter, it was windless, around 21 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.
On such a lovely day they left the big glass sliding doors open so we had an uninterrupted view.
There was a dog that belonged to the winery and it was captivating to watch him as he encouraged the diners in the restaurant to throw him some food (which Trevor did – a nice chunk of juicy Argentinian steak). The dog really knew his audience and played it up to his full potential.
Trevor said it reminded him of his dog Bambi, who would go up to the barbeque area on top of Arthurs Seat on weekends begging for food from hapless tourists – a well worn and effective strategy in the dog world it seems. While the food was awesome, the wine here was only so-so, but we were here primarily for the food, so it wasn’t an issue.
Following lunch we headed off to our last winery visit for the Mendoza part of our holiday. One of the wineries that kicked off the fine wine scene in Argentina and really put Mendoza on the map is Catena Zapata, and it was here were we chose to have our final tasting experience. I know we keep harping on it, but the architecture of some of these wineries is really something to behold. Catena Zapata is one of these wineries. Sitting in the middle of the vineyard is this Mayan-like pyramid, which truly is a temple to South American wine.
We’d organised a semi private tasting, and thankfully the other people never showed, so we had the luck to have the place to ourselves. Our guide was really fantastic and was one of the best wine educators we’d ever come across. Not only was she very knowledgeable about the Catena Zapata wines, she really made an effort to try to teach us to think a bit more deeply about the wine. Funny, after all this time going to wine tastings and touring wineries we found out that we still had a lot to learn about wine – who would have known? At the end of the tasting, something very unusual happened. Our guide said that she felt that drinking wine was something more than just having a glass to drink, but was something deeper and for her, she said that the tango was something special and so she wanted to sing us a tango (yes like the famous Argentinian dance, turns out they also sing the tango – who knew?).
She was an excellent singer, but it was pretty unusual to have this very emotional singing happening during a wine tasting – a first for us.
Exhausted and burned out from three days of wine and food we decided to stay home and get an early night, which we spent figuring out how to pack all our wine so we didn’t breach the per-bag luggage limit for our flight the next morning - not an easy task to do seeing we’d bought a lot of wine (more than 10kg extra luggage to fit in).
For lunch we’d booked the degustation menu and wine pairing at the Casarena winery. If we hadn’t mentioned many times already before, it has to be said again, this is one of the most stunning wine regions in the world – the views across the vineyards to the high Andes are awesome. We had our table set up with the most beautiful views and, again, the food didn’t disappoint. We were having such lovely weather too, so today, despite it being middle of winter, it was windless, around 21 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.
There was a dog that belonged to the winery and it was captivating to watch him as he encouraged the diners in the restaurant to throw him some food (which Trevor did – a nice chunk of juicy Argentinian steak). The dog really knew his audience and played it up to his full potential.
Following lunch we headed off to our last winery visit for the Mendoza part of our holiday. One of the wineries that kicked off the fine wine scene in Argentina and really put Mendoza on the map is Catena Zapata, and it was here were we chose to have our final tasting experience. I know we keep harping on it, but the architecture of some of these wineries is really something to behold. Catena Zapata is one of these wineries. Sitting in the middle of the vineyard is this Mayan-like pyramid, which truly is a temple to South American wine.
Exhausted and burned out from three days of wine and food we decided to stay home and get an early night, which we spent figuring out how to pack all our wine so we didn’t breach the per-bag luggage limit for our flight the next morning - not an easy task to do seeing we’d bought a lot of wine (more than 10kg extra luggage to fit in).
