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Published: March 30th 2008
Mendoza: Land of Wine and the Mountains ** I am apologizing up front because this one is a bit long, but I included a few tasting notes**
After a 13 hour drive through the night we arrived to a beautiful view of the Andes Mountains fronted by a small cobblestone terracotta city. An hour and a half drive north we arrived at our little cabana and packed in while my host parents relaxed from the drive and Jen and I just chatted and took in the surroundings.
A few hours later we headed into the city for some directions, maps and our first wine tasting of the adventure. We sought out the Vines of Mendoza tasting room. This is very much a tourist trap built by Americans for Americans. I tried to speak to the waiters in Spanish and he immediately reverted to English even though half of my party didn’t speak the language. We decided to try a flight of Malbec’s to get us ready for our wine adventures. Below are tasting notes on my favorite of the group:
Otello 2006 -Made by Bodegas Sottano, this Lujon de Cuyo winery concentrates on a
blend of traditional techniques mixed with the newest technologies. With Italian ancestry, they were one of the original pioneers of Mendoza. This Malbec tells that story. It runs about $30-35 USD in the States and is 100%!M(MISSING)albec with 8 months in oak and unfiltered. It has a very powerful nose with beautifully smoky plum notes and on the palate it is true to its aroma. It is incredibly jammy & with complex flavors of cherry and plum with overtones of oak, vanilla and chocolate.
After our “flight” of Malbec’s we walked around the city a bit admiring the main square and checking out the city center and the local artisan fair. We ended this first day off with a great dinner at this little hip restaurant called Allure right in the center of town. The food was fantastic and the prices very affordable. I had this amazing steak with this incredible Malbec reduction sauce.
Lujon de Cuyo & Maipu The next day we woke up bright and early for our collective wine day. As per my other blog this is where we got stopped and fined for having headlights off. We made it to our “private
special tour,” arranged by a wine contact of mine from the US, to the bodegas of Catena Zapata, one of Malbec’s finest treasure troves. Catena exports 90%!o(MISSING)f their wine with the majority being sent for distribution in the United States and have won a myriad of international awards and accolades. See tasting notes below of my two favorites 😉:
Catena Chardonnay 2006 - 100%!C(MISSING)hardonnay sourced from their highest vineyard “la Piramide,” Catena has captured the essence of Chardonnay. 100%!b(MISSING)arrel fermented and aged for 9 months in French oak this Chardonnay leaves tongues wagging for more. With careful site selection all hand picked and sorted grapes the delicate Chardonnay screams tropical paradise. The deep aroma is fresh and tight with tropical and stone fruits coupled with delicate mineral notes. On the palate this wine comes alive with balanced acidity and a rich texture. The fruit flavors fill your mouth with interesting hints of flowers and minerals. With true varietal character this is a must buy wine at around $22 USD.
Catena Alta Malbec 2005 - This is one of Catena’s Premium line wines only to be headed by their Catena Zapata Premier line. This
Malbec is a blend using grapes from the Catena’s finest and highest altitude vineyards and its best lower altitude vineyards. (NOTE: when you see a wine labelled Malbec-Malbec, this means that the grapes were taken from two distinct vineyards usually at very different altitudes) The Alta Malbec is fermented for 12 days followed by a 28 day maceration process. The wine is then aged for 18 months in 100%!n(MISSING)ew French oak. It shows a lighter rim with a mesmerizing deep purple color. It has a powerful nose of plum and dark fruit with hints of vanilla, pepper and leather. On the palate this wine shows its balance and intrigue with mineral and dust wind notes atop the rich plumy black fruit and dark cherry flavors. Letting it sit and open up this wine finds a deeper complexity that seems to last forever in your mouth. This wine should run about 45 USD but if you can find it try to get a vintage 2002.
Carmelo Patti - We then visited El Lagar Caramelo Patti. This tiny little whole in the wall boutique winery is a site in itself. With no signs and a warehouse face on the side
of a random country road you’ll be lucky to find this place. You round the corner to a alley and park. Once you get out of the car, you see about 15 young men chucking grapes into a destemmer machine about 10 feet away from a very busy bottling machine. As you round the corner to a very informal warehouse stocked with boxes and bottles, you see a tiny little man(Carmelo Patti himself) with a huge smile and a table full wines. These wines are suppose to be rare finds of very cheap luscious Malbec’s and Cab’s that can be put down for years. We tried a few of the Malbec’s from different vintages, personally I wasn’t really impressed. I think they need a lot more time in the bottle and the balance just isn’t quite developed. The best wine presented to us was the Gran Assemblage, a blend of Malbec, Merlot and Cab Franc. This wine still needed a few years in bottle but seemed to have the most potential for development.
Familia Zuccardi-Third and last winery of the day was Familia Zuccardi, which make pretty traditional industrial wines with a pretty decent Santa Julia line. This winery
is very much set up for tourists with organized tours running daily and a pretty decent wine “themed” store. You would be really surprised how hard it was to find wine posters and corkscrews etc. in this city, so this place was a great find for these types of gifts. The Zuccardi wines are all ready to drink making great daily wines. Although they are mainly commercial, if you’re looking for something a bit better try their well-priced Malbec Zuccardi Q line. They also have a really interesting late harvest wine called Malamado both a Viognier and Malbec variety that are definitely worth a try.
Andes OK now day three was a lot less wine and a lot more mountains. We took out trip to the Andes. Driving up through the mountains we started taking a million pictures out of the car window. Termas Villavicencio, an abandoned old hotel and hot springs resort, was our first stop. We hiked a bit up the mountain side, took a few pictures and ate these amazing ham sandwiches that melt in your mouth. Then we continued on to the top of the mountain on the trail that San Martin used for his
liberation campaign. We drove up to a 3,000 KM summit point in the midst of clouds. Finally making our decent to the city of Uspalla, we filled up on gas and continued on. Another few hours of driving through the mountains and we made it to the national park which had precious views of the Aconcagua Mountain, the tallest point in the western hemisphere coming in at 6,960 meters above sea level. We stopped for hot chocolate and then continued on to our final stop at the bridge of the Incas. A beautiful scenic route and a full day’s journey from the city, I highly recommended this day trip if you have a car and the extra time.
Random Facts that I learned from Geraldine: 1) All vines are planted north to south so that as the day goes on the vines receive the maxium amount of heat and sunlight. 2) Each winery owner must pay a high tax to the city as a type of insurance system against hail. They pay this sum and when hail clouds come the city will send up planes that drop some type of bomb into the clouds separating the large hail pieces
into smaller managable pieces. 3) 1 Month of rain in Buenos Aires is a years worth of rain in Mendoza! 4) All of mendoza's grapes are picked by hand. Thousands of migrant workers visit during harvest season, called golengrinas. They are named after the migrant birds as they move from harvest to harvest looking for jobs. 5)Malbec means "bad taste" in French. The french use it for color but not taste. This grape takes on a different taste in Mendoza and has become their prime varietal. etc. etc. etc. GREAT TOUR GUIDE!
Valle de Uco The next day we went our separate ways and I booked a wine tour to the Valle de Uco with Ampora wine tours. This small very exclusive tour agency caters directly to Americans. With only English speaking tours and a price that Argentines can’t even believe. Our guide, Geraldine, was fantastic, and has become a great friend of mine. We couldn’t stop chatting the entire trip and are now trying to devise a plan for my return to Mendoza, where she has offered to let me stay in her house and help me find a job working short term at one of the smaller
wineries!!! On this tour we visited 3 wineries and learned a ton especially from Geraldine.
Andeluna: This winery is owned by Ward Lay of Lays potato chips as a joint venture originally with the Latina Reina family of Argentina. Their rich history and his foreign capital created a beautiful winery with some truly stunning wines. Receiving international acclaim, this winery shows strength in all of its lines. The Pasionado grand reserve blend is a MUST try for wine lovers. This Bordeaux style wine has it all, made from the very best grapes all hand picked and rigorously selected, each varietal is fermented separately and aged in new French oak for 12 months before being blended. The blend then spends another 6 months in barrel and 8 months in bottle before it is released. It has an incredibly deep purple color with a bouquet and palate of red fruits with oak, pepper and vanilla undertones. This wine has strong rounded tannins that make it a great wine to lay down, but this wine is definitely ready to drink when purchased. With an amazingly full body mouth feel, balanced acidity and tannins and a complexity of fruit, flowers and spices this
is a must buy!
El Azul: If you can find these amazing artisanal wines, buy them! The visit here was a little more organized than Caramelo Patti but this place had an aura of its own. A small warehouse with 6 small fermentation tanks side by side, a small “chemistry table” for blending, and a small old school wooden press filled the room. As the group listened to the detailed explanations of how these wines are made, glasses were passed around with wine straight from the tanks. This free run wine was provided to show us the very apparent differences with the final product. We then moved on to the main lines, which were all fantastic! There was a extraordinary Malbec and a beautiful Cabernet. But the crème de la crème of this winery is their reserve blend of Cab Sauv/Malbec/Merlot. And if you can believe it these wines run between 10 and 20 dollars!
O’Fournier: This was the last winery of the trip but a real treat. To start with a bit of history this winery is owned by the Ortega Gil-Fourneir family. This winery has grown tremendously throughout the years and today receives a lot of
international acclaim. Their main brand lines are the A and B Cruxs. This name comes from the positioning of the stars in the Southern Cross. Their symbol the ostrich, represents the joining of the earth and the sky. Not really sure where the ostrich comes in but what I was told that it had to do with old Indian legend. One of the coolest things about this winery is its spanish traditions. The winemaker is unique in its pruning style keeping a portion of its vines close to the ground as is tradition in Spain. In Mendoza, everyone else uses higer trellis style pruning systems such as the parral system (netted over top and picked from above) or the espaldero system (vines are squeezed upright with nets and picked from the sides) in order to protect the vines against hail.
We started off with an interesting five course meal in the Bodega restaurant run by the owner’s wife. Our meal included a ricotta ice-cream and cucumber dessert that Geraldine and I kept eating because we couldn’t figure out whether we liked it or not. We tried all of their Crux wines here and since we were eating as we tasted the different wines, I don’t have any notes on this winery. But my favorite was definitely the Alpha Crux Malbec. It fit fantastically with our steak and from what I was later told, this top of the line wine was aged 18 months in new oak with 12 in bottle.
My trip ends with me wandering around the center at night buying a random poncho and belt in the local artisanal fair and watching a bunch of small outdoor shows, some magic show for kids, a bunch of traditional native Indian's dancing and playing the flute and even a fire and unicycle show. The next day we left at 5 am to try and beat traffic winding up in the middle of the farmers protests.
Cheers!
Jenn
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