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We had been looking forward to Mendoza for quite some time, so were very keen to jump straight in and get involved with wine based activities. We decided to splurge and book hotel in Maipu which was incredibly cheap for the overall quality of the hotel (Olympic sized heated pool, gym, sauna, steam room, outdoor pool with jaccuzi, casino ...). We headed to Mr Hugos bike rental in Maipu and go on a tour (and tastings) of the many many bodegas dotted around. Upon getting our free wine at Mr Hugos, we got talking to a group of American girls from California and we decided to cycle around together. One very handy fact was that one of the girls was from Napa vally and was an Oenologist, so knew a thing or two about wine and helped us with everything we needed to know about the wines and the wine making process. We thought it would be most sensible to cycle to the furthest bodega first then visit others on the way back before we go too intoxicated on Argentinas finest.
Our first bodega was French owned and was fairly small but full of modern wine making equipment. The tour
was great and was made even more authentic by having a French tour guide explain the way the bodega worked and the types of wines they made. Now came the best part... the wine tasting! We entered the tasting room and were offered a large menu with combinations of wines to taste, we only knew Argentina was famous for malbec but luckily the Californian Oenologist recommended a white wine exclusively made in Argentina called Torrontes which was her favourite... and soon became ours. We stopped off at two other bodegas; The next was the oldest bodega in Mendoza which was great as we got to see how wine was made and stored before the big stainless steel tanks were introduced. We tasted four excellent wines, including a great malbec and an amazing Torrontes desert wine.Next stop was a much more lavish bodega which was much larger than the other two we had visited. The tour and tastings were great and the guide taught us all how to properly study and taste the wines. We were tipsy to say the least so headed back to the hotel for dinner and casino fun!
The next day we moxed to a cheap
hostel in central Mendoza where we bumped into a girl we met during our very first week in Rio! The hostel bar was offering free fernet and cokes (the local speciality, similar to jagermeister) and after many free drinks we headed out into Mendoza with some locals. Mendoza nightlife is crazier than we expected, a huge street filled with endless people and bars, and we had a great night dancing to mostly local music (and a few extremely random English songs they decided to play, including Robbie Williams and Spice Girls!). We spent most of Sunday recovering in the hostel in preparation for another night of drinking. We had seen good reviews on tripadvisor about a weekly wine tasting and had booked earlier in the week. We were slightly apprehensive as we really don't know much about wine, so would have looked very silly in a group of wine connoisseurs, but we had such a fun night! It was held in an amazing appartment, where we were all given a list of the six wines to be tasted that evening. We ended up with a great group of people from Canada, Australia and America, and all got on well straight
away. The wines were all lovely, and to our surprise we all got given a very large glass of each of the wines to drink. We would definitely reccommend the Sunday Wine Connection!
On our final day in Mendoza we arranged to meet up with two friends and rent bikes for the second time! They also brought along two other people so the six of us headed off to the bodegas we had missed last time. We had another fun wine filled day, and this time even stopped at a chocolate and liqueur factory AND had an amazing lunch at one of the bodegas. I think it's fair to say that we were all fairly drunk by the time we cycled back to Mr Hugos' in the evening, but we still didn't turn down the free wine there!
Mendoza definitely lived up to our expectations! Great fun and great wine!
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Ian Cobb
non-member comment
Wine tasting
Hi Hayden & Lucy, You certainly seemed to have had a great time, what you can remember of it anyway !! I will try and find the wines you recommend and try them out. Luv dad x