Enjoying Three Basic Food Groups: Wine, Olive Oil, and Chocolate!

Oct 1, 2009

Mendoza was a beautiful place and since we already love the food here we couldn’t find any other reason to leave other than the fact that we have a flight leaving Ushuaia (“the bottom of the world” at the southernmost tip of South America) on October 12th, so we needed to be down there by then.

Checking out of our hostel by 10:00AM did not give a lot of time for our clothes to dry, especially since it was pretty cold at night so we had stuffed our damp clothes into our packs and left them at the hostel to enjoy our day without hauling our luggage. We definitely wanted to see more of Mendoza, and the weather was gorgeous so we were pleasantly surprised to see the sun shining. Justin was smart enough to bring a few clothing items (shirt, sweatshirt and pants) with him that were still damp and we sat in the Plaza Independencia and laid out his clothes on one of the benches to dry.

Afterwards, our stomachs started growling so we were on a mission to find a great place to eat, but also looked around to see what the downtown of Mendoza had to offer. I absolutely, positively love, love, LOVE shoes and in Mendoza there were a plethora of shoe stores! I was in shoe heaven, and although, they were affordable, I didn’t want to weigh my pack down with too much with shoes. It took some will power but I was eventually able to walk past some of the cute stores without stopping and staring at the shoe display.

Anyway, because of “siesta” (Spanish cultural hours of napping after eating lunch) most stores, coffee shops, anything that had an open sign was closed from the hours of 1:00PM to 5:00PM. Luckily, some restaurants were still open so we ate delicious meals of grilled chicken with salad and a pizza with tons of cheese and green olives.

We needed to be back at the hostel by 2:00PM to make it to our wine tour on time. For about $15US each our tour consisted of transportation to and from the hostel; transportation in between the various places; a tour of 2 different wineries, an olive oil production company, and a chocolate and liquor shop. What a steal! Before the bus picked us up, we played ping pong at the hostel and clearly, I was the grand winner (just joking Justin...maybe!).

It was about 2:30PM when we got picked up and the tour was supposed to last until 6:00PM. The timing couldn’t be any more perfect considering our bus to San Carlos de Bariloche left Mendoza at 9:30PM that night. We hopped on the bus to see one other passenger who was going to be on the tour. Right afterwards, we picked up 2 other couples from a different hotel.

We went straight to our first winery called ‘Cavas de don Arturo’ and were greeted by a nice young lady from Florida (had originally went to Argentina as a tourist, fell in love with the country and decided to work at the winery) who gave us a separate wine tour in English, whereas everyone else from our bus got a tour with another guide in Spanish. Justin and I prefer white wine over red but this specific winery only made red wine. We weren’t complaining because we got to test their Syrah, Malbec, and Cabernet wines. Their tastes were more on the strong side but we decided to buy a couple of smaller wine bottles for really cheap!

Driving past vineyards, and pulling into a driveway, we saw beautiful brightly painted murals on the outskirts of the property of ‘Pasrai’. At first I wasn’t too sure where we were or what kind of company we were at but I thought I overheard someone say “chocolate” so I only assumed we were at a chocolate factory. I was terribly mistaken since I later realized that we were actually at an olive oil production company. Greeted by a bilingual guide who spoke both Spanish and English, Justin and I were amazed to hear her convert from English to Spanish and vice versa without blinking or even taking a breath. She described the process of making olive oil and then sprung a question on us, “what’s missing?” Justin answered “bread,” which seemed like a logical answer at the time but the correct answer was “olives”. Although the other tourists spoke Spanish, they understood what was being asked in English and what Justin had said and chuckled a little. We were told the process of olive oil production and saw examples of filtered and unfiltered olive oil.

The best part was the taste testing. We tried unfiltered, and filtered olive oil, balsamic vinegar and sundried tomatoes all on bread. Justin and I were so impressed with the taste of the unfiltered olive oil that we bought a bottle and were really excited about it. It was Justin’s favorite purchase of the day!

Next stop was another winery called Baudron. Upon our arrival, we could tell that many tours were conducted here at the same time just by looking at how many people there were. There must’ve been a crowd of about 80 people or so and everyone was speaking in Spanish. Luckily, our driver had mentioned that there were 2 English speakers and after a few minutes, a very nice lady conducted a private tour for us in English! Score! It was definitely a lot more personable and we felt pretty special.

For the wine testing, we got to taste a white wine (Chardonnay) and a red one (Malbec). Both were delicious but Justin and I were relieved that this winery offered some white wines! When holding a glass of white wine, we were told to tilt the glass on an angle to see the different colours. The top edge should be yellow and almost green and as you look towards the bottom of the glass, it should be golden and never orange. If the colour was ever orange, it was a sign of old wine. As for the red wine, we swirled the wine in the glass and observed for what they called ‘tears’ along the walls of the glass. The more tears there were, the higher the glycerin content, the higher the quality of wine.

We even got to taste some other wines such as one that tasted like ‘Moscato’ (Justin’s fav wine) and their specialty grape juice. We were so impressed that we bought 2 giant bottles of the grape juice and a bottle of the ‘Moscato’ taste-a-like wine! Total wine bottle count: 5.

Our final stop was at ‘A la Antigua’. It was the chocolate and liquor shop owned by a really sweet, jolly woman. She knew a little bit of English but she was such a joy and the most enthusiastic person we’ve met on the trip yet. She showed us all sorts of products they made. Anything from port wines, jams & jellies, dulce de leche spreads, honey, veggie pastes, chocolate, liquor and even absinthe were available.

We taste tested a variety of things. First was the chocolate: white chocolate with dulce de leche in between. It was heaven and instantaneously decided to buy some before we left! After that we got to choose what kind of liquor we wanted to drink and I opted for the hazelnut liquor and Justin got mint chocolate liquor. Both had a very strong alcohol taste but they were still delicious. We also got to choose from an assortment of jellies and other products. Justin chose a chocolate-orange spread while I tasted smoked cheese. We loved it there so much that we would definitely go back there if we were ever in Mendoza again.

By the time we left the chocolate store, it was 7:30pm. Why was it that Justin and I always rushed anything we did, especially catching a bus? Getting to our hostel by 8:30pm (2.5 hours later than the expected time and 1 hour until our bus left), we decided to split up. I went back to our hostel to ask for a taxi and to get our stuff and organize a few things including putting our wine bottles into our packs. (You’ll find out in the Bariloche blog that it was not the smartest idea in the world, but to my defense, they were boxed and surrounded by a lot of clothing to cushion it!) On the other hand, Justin ran to the supermarket to prep for our 20 hour bus ride to Bariloche. He got some delicious bread to compliment our olive oil, cheese, ham, crackers, lots of water and other snacks but the lines to actually buy the foods were ridiculously long. Frustrated, Justin made the decision to leave the supermarket and get food once we’re at the bus terminal. It was a smart move because the taxi arrived as soon as he did.

By far, the prices of anything got jacked up at the bus terminal. But we got lots of snacks, bread and water to tie us up for the bus ride so we were pretty happy. We almost missed our bus when we realized that our bus wasn’t at the right platform (or maybe it was at the right platform and we were at the wrong one…). We were super excited about this bus in particular because it was a double decker bus and we had front row seats on the 2nd floor. They called it the ‘panoramic view’ and we were stoked about being able to see lots of things.

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