Mendoza, Argentina's prime wine producing area, in late autumn is beautiful. The air is crisp, the leaves are changing, the harvest is over and the wineries, as always, are happy to provide tours and tastings to visitors. Remember autumn in South America is spring in the northern hemisphere, so if you are looking for a taste of fall before the long, hot summer, head south.
Most people arrive in Mendoza via air. Mendoza's new and modern airport is a 1½ hour flight from Buenos Aires or a 50 minute flight from Santiago, Chile. You can also cross the Andes from Santiago to Mendoza in a private car, hired van or by regularly scheduled, air-conditioned coach. In good weather it takes about seven hours and the views are spectacular.
The best way to begin a visit to Mendoza is with a city tour. The Province of Mendoza is a series of man-made oases, land reclaimed from the surrounding pampas by smart water management. The Huarpe Indians first channeled the plentiful water from melting snow in the Andes into a series of canals in this desert-like area to irrigate their crops -- potatoes and corn.
During the 1700s the Spaniards arrived and expanded the clever network of irrigation canals to allow for commercial production of wine, brandy, fruit, flour and olive oil and trade with Buenos Aires was established.
Handicraft fairs abound -- the lamp bases (above)
are made of local grape vines
The irrigation system now consists of dams, reservoirs and canals and a management system that maintains it. Trees have been imported from around the world and Mendoza's shady streets are waiting to be explored. There are more than 40 neighborhood parks in the city and its huge San Martín civic park to the west of town is almost as large as the city itself. Here you'll find the zoological gardens, the rowing and golf clubs, the soccer stadium in which the 1978 World Cup playoffs were held, a rose garden, playgrounds, natural forested areas, historical statues and much more.
There are more than 90 wineries registered with the agricultural department of Mendoza so there's an enotourism vacation to suit everyone's taste - from backpackers visiting the free tours with tastings to full-scale, first-class gastronomy adventures, you'll find it all in this scenic area.
On a recent trip to Mendoza we visited small boutique wineries, vineyards producing well-known export brands and bodegas with their vine's well-established roots deep in the Mendoza soil. Our brief sampling can't begin to cover the possibilities Mendoza holds for travelers seeking to sample Argentine wine. We first visited wineries in Luján de Cuyo, near Mendoza, where the oldest wineries are found, and then proceeded to vineyards in the Uco valley.
Bodega y Cavas de Weinert
Located in a 1890s era Spanish colonial winery building, previously owned by Mendoza's family Otero, Bodega y Cavas de Weinert was founded in 1975 by Don Bernardo C. Weinert, a Brazilian-born entrepreneur of Swiss and German ancestry. Weinert, a wine enthusiast, extensively researched wine producing areas before settling on the Luján de Cuyo property. Once acquired, he installed the most technologically advanced winemaking equipment available at the time. Today you'll see barrels of wine stored in the epoxy-lined concrete tanks used by the original owners to ferment wine. The thick walls provide insulation from hot Mendoza summers. While walking among the huge oak casks, note the small access door at the front of each barrel. Men of a certain physique (flexible with small shoulders) wriggle through those doors each year to steam clean them and then scrape away the year's sediment.
http://www.bodegaweinert.com/
Bodega Septima
Wine tasting on Septima's terrace overlooking the Andes
Situated in Luján de Cuyo near Mendoza, Bodega Septima produces traditional wines in a modern facility designed to accentuate the cultural heritage and native building materials of the region. Established in 1999 by the Codorníu Group, famed maker of sparkling wines in Spain, Septima has three wine lines: varietals, coupage wines and reserves and storage capacity for more than one million bottles. We climbed stairs to the catwalks that allow access to the huge steel fermentation tanks and then visited the cellars. After a tour of the winery we sampled wines on the second floor terrace overlooking the vineyards and the snow-capped Andes.
http://www.bodegaseptima.com
Luigi Bosca
In 1901 the Arizu family arrived in Luján de Cuyo from Italy and purchased a flour mill more to harness the power generated by its windmill to irrigate the grape vines they brought from Italy than to process grain. The vines flourished and the winery is a fourth generation family business since. Visitors today will find a one acre demonstration vineyard next to the winery. Inside the winery barrels of wine are stored in the underground tunnels that once carried water to power the mill. Visitors may also tour the colonial building that has housed the winery for decades. There's also art on display in the cellars where guests may view "Wine Via Crucis," artist Hugo Leytes' 14 panels depicting wine making and its relationship to the Stations of the Cross.
http://www.luigibosca.com.ar/
LaGarde Winery
A winemaker draws a sample from a cement fermenting tank
under the original winery floor
A visit to the LaGarde winery in Luján de Cuyo offers a glimpse of winemaking as done by the early Italians who settled in Mendoza in the 1800s. In the winery building, built in 1897 and still used today, you'll see the thick walls and underground concrete tanks used to protect fermenting wine from the heat of Mendoza's summers. The huge tanks are still in use - the day we visited a winemaker was opening the access hatches located on the main building's floor and drawing samples of the wine fermenting beneath us. We also watched as an employee froze the sediment-filled necks of bottles of sparkling wine and removed the residue that had settled over months of aging. He then added a little more wine and corked the bottles. He has been solely responsible for the hand-finishing of the winery's sparkling wine for more than 35 years. The vineyard surrounding the winery was planted by the original owners. Thirty rows of malbec are planted so close together that they still must be tilled by mule and plow because modern equipment would damage the roots. Old olive trees dot the vineyard to attract birds away from the grapes.
The tasting room is in a portion of the original owner's home. Black and white photos trace the vineyards history of the winery and a broader range of wines are offered for tasting than in some of the other bodegas we visited. Ask for a peek into the home's original dining room, which is still used for hosting dignitaries and VIPs.
http://gauchogroup.com/_wsn/page2.html
