Wining, dining, and climbing

Following my time in Buenos Aires and Córdoba, Jen, Tilly and I flew over to Mendoza, one of Argentina’s main wine-producing regions. We stayed in a lovely Airbnb near the Maipu wine region, which has around 1200 wineries, and we had amazing hosts who lived next door. On our first day in Mendoza, we made our way over to the wineries of the Maipu region so we could spend the day going from winery to winery doing wine tastings. To get around the area, we hired bikes from Mr Hugo’s Bikes, which cost about £6 each for the full day at the time of writing. An added bonus of hiring them from this particular shop was that the owner had an adorable spaniel and several tiny kittens! Speaking from experience, if it’s particularly warm weather when you’re in Mendoza I’d recommend not doing the wineries by bike and instead taking a hop-on-hop-off bus, as when we were there it was nearly 40 degrees and by the end of the day we were dripping with sweat which wasn’t exactly pleasant.

One of the kittens at Mr Hugo's Bikes

With our bikes hired, we set off towards our first winery, which was about 500m down the road from Mr Hugo’s Bikes. This winery was called Domiciano, and was unique for being the only bodega in the area to harvest its grapes by night, which apparently gave their wines a different taste to most – I’m no wine connoisseur so have no clue how this makes a difference, but it was an interesting fact all the same. Here we did a white wine tasting, and the first of the three wines we were served, the Cosecha de Estrellas sweet wine, was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted – so much so that we bought a bottle after the tasting (it only cost £4, how could we resist?).

In the tasting room at Domiciano

From Domiciano, we cycled down the road for about 45 minutes until we reached the Tempus Alba winery. Here you could follow a self-guided tour around the vineyard before heading upstairs to the lovely terrace, where you can get a bite to eat while you do your wine tasting. After wolfing down a lovely fresh quinoa salad, I tried a rosé, a Merlot, and a Malbec, the last of which had to be done as it is the wine that the region is famous for. I’m not going to pretend I could taste a huge difference between the Merlot and the Malbec, because I couldn’t, but I enjoyed them nonetheless, and the view over the vineyard from the terrace was beautiful.

Selection of wines at Tempus Alba

Next up on our whistle-stop wine tour was Viña el Cerno, which is just down the road from Tempus Alba. Viña el Cerno is an organic winery, and here we decided to do a sparkling wine tasting. We were brought a glass of a sweet, a dry, and a rosé sparkling wine, and were able to enjoy them outside whilst looking out on the vineyards in front of us. The nicest of the three was the sweet one, but that might have had more to do with the fact the other two had gone a bit flat by the time I got round to drinking them.

Sparkling wines at Viña el Cerno

The final winery of the day was Mevi, which lies a little further down the road from Viña el Cerno. By the time we arrived here, we were starting to get quite hungry after all the cycling and several glasses of wine, so we ordered some cheese and meat boards to keep us going. To go with these, I chose a Malbec rosé, a Chardonnay, and a Malbec red so that I could get a nice mix in for my last wine tasting. To be honest, Mevi’s wines were easily the least enjoyable of all the wines we’d tried that day, but the cheese and meat boards compensated nicely for that.

Wining and dining at Mevi

Upon arrival back at the Airbnb, our hosts very kindly prepared us a typical Argentinian asado (BBQ). It was just what we needed after a long day of cycling and drinking, and shortly after eating it was time for us to go to bed as the following day we were doing a tour of the high Andes, and were going to have to wake up pretty early to start the tour on time.

The asado being prepared 

After an early start, we made our way up to the first stop on our high Andes tour in a minibus. This was a beautiful lake in a place called Potresillos, and its purpose was to preserve the River Mendoza and create hydroelectricity for the region. After waiting for some girls on our tour to finish taking their 800th photo, we continued on to Uspallata where we stopped for breakfast. If you’re ever in Mendoza and plan on doing this tour, remember to bring cash, as most places in the mountains don’t accept card.

Lake at Potresillos

After a number of vaguely interesting stops, we stopped at Puente del Inca, a natural rock formation that acts as a bridge. Inca legend says that an emperor from Cusco travelled to this spot with his sick son as there was talk of the waters here having healing powers. His workers lay across the gap to form a human bridge, but were petrified in this position, frozen here forever in this bridge formation, and that this was how the Puente del Inca came to being.

Puente del Inca

From here we made our way to the Aconcagua Provincial Park, which is home to the highest mountain in the Americas, also classified as the 8th highest peak in the world. From where we walked to, you get a spectacular view of a number of lagoons, and in the distance sits the majestic Aconcagua, its peak snow-capped. The name Aconcagua means “stone guardian” in Quechua, which is the language spoken by a lot of people in places that used to form part of the Incan empire. We finished off the tour with a lovely buffet lunch at Restaurante Las Cuevas before starting our descent back to Mendoza.

In front of Aconcagua

Un beso,

Lola