Advertisement
Published: March 31st 2019
Edit Blog Post
As we approached ‘El Chalet’ the ferocious dog, commonly found in almost every Argentine household, came out to meet us barking loudly. Jane gripped my hand tightly, “Are you sure this is a restaurant?”. I could see the front door of the house was just open a crack so I pushed it open. “Hola”, I shouted. Inside were some laid-up tables in a plain room with no one present. “Hola, hola?”. I could hear some noise in the back so I continued on through the room to a back corridor where I could see a kitchen to the left. “Hoolla?”. This time ‘Juan’ heard me and came bustling out to greet us. Yes, he could serve lunch. We told him through google translate that we ‘eat anything’ and sat down and waited. There was no menu. What then appeared was a superb meal of cold ‘mezze’ starters, oven baked beef and poached fruit. All was home made and all superb. No one else was about.
It had been a shear stroke of luck that we had found the place. We had set off that day on an adventure to use the buses to get to the highly recommended CarinaE vineyard
in Maipu on the outskirts of Mendoza from our base near Lujan de Coyo. This had involved managing the local bureaucracy to buy a bus card the previous day and then working out a route with one change. It was an interesting challenge and would have been far quicker and not much more expensive by taxi but not the fun! Having tasted the wines at CarinaE and the olive oil farm across the road at Laur we were considering a place for lunch. The area was almost in the country and there was not a lot about. I scanned google maps and it showed El Chalet a km up the road with 3 x 5* reviews. It was endorsed by the tour guide at CarinaE so this is how we had come to investigate what from the outside looked like an ordinary house and not like a restaurant at all. The fantastic home cooking Juan produced seemed appropriate for the surroundings.
Once we had finished our meal we walked across the road to the Florio vineyard and tasted their sweet wines, a style unique in Mendoza. Apparently, many Argentines like the sweet wine ice cold on a summer’s day.
They stop the fermentation by cooling when the alcohol content has reached 8%. I have to say it was very pleasant. What we had come to try was the dessert wine and they had a honeyed muscat fortified with grappa that took our fancy. We then miraculously make it back on the bus to our Airbnb base.
This was in fact day 3 of our 4 days trying different wines at different local vineyards in close proximity to where we were staying. Its not something that can be rushed. At one, Vistalba, we had a three hour lunch with paired wines for each course. On another day we rented bikes from the new company ‘Vistabla Bikes’ and cycled around 3 others. Viamonte gave us the best tour, teaching us how they manage the vines and allowing us to see the processing of the grapes being picked that day.
We finished at the Gieco vineyard, own by a local family (many of the others are significant businesses and part of companies who have interests in Chile, Spain, Napa etc). We were shown around by the daughter, Virginia. They were from an old local family which had had to sell
off significant parts of their land in the 1970’s and 80’s. They had a beautiful house and arboretum in the centre of their 15 hectare vineyard that the father managed. They were just building their new winery supervised the son, an architect based in Italy, who would be joining them the next day. Being a small vineyard it gave us the chance to meet the owners and understand more about their lives.
It was interesting to learn about each winery’s character and see how they tried to differentiate themselves from the 600 other wineries in the area. All, of course, grew the famous Malbec, which had drawn us to Mendoza in the first place. Many also produced blends with other grapes. Some also did characterful olive oils. We were impressed with the dry rose wines we were served based on Malbec grapes.
It was a fine way to finish off our trip. We had found a very spacious and economical Airbnb in the Southern suburb of Vistabla with its own pool run by an ex-pat Englishman, Mike, who owned the Lao hostel in Mendoza. The house was surrounded by interesting vineyards which meant we actually never went in
an explored the city of Mendoza itself. The house was in a gated community which are common in the Mendoza suburbs. We saw at least four other ‘gated communities’ being build when we cycled around the area. Mendoza is expanding fast. Each plot is about a hectare because there is no shortage of space. Most houses are rectangular with flat roofs and all by law must have a water tank on the roof. Close inspection does show that build quality even for new places is not to European standards and Mike commented on this as he told us of some of his experiences. Vistabla had excellent roads, cycle paths and pavements and as soon as you got in to the community through ‘the gate’ it was dusty dirt roads. And as everywhere we were welcomed by a cacophony of dog barks coming from each compound. It certainly provided a different perspective.
We now return home. Argentina has yet again not disappointed. We have always felt safe, people have been universally friendly and it has been pleasure to learn and experience more about this interesting part of the world.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.044s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0253s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb