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Published: January 29th 2015
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I’d bought an overnight cama (bed) bus from Cordoba to Mendoza and I got the best night’s sleep I’d had in 3 nights. It was well air conditioned, they had coffee machines on it and like all the other Argentinians on the bus I put my chair right back so it formed a bed, got my pyjamas on, closed the curtains and slept like a log. I woke up in Mendoza.
2 hours after arriving into the bus station I’d joined a tour to two vineyards and an olive oil factory with a bus full of mainly Argentinians on holiday from Buenos Aires. It was a bus ride with a good, merry vibe. Yes certainly a ride with a vibe.
The first vineyard was a bigger, more industrial one which used both white and red grape, both from France and Argentina. Both countries use the same grape but cultivate the wine in different ways. The owner of the vineyard took us around each part of it, explaining the process in detail. Afterwards we all sat down together and tried 3 different wines – we discussed the taste, the colour and the smell in detail. I don’t remember any of
the names of the wines, especially as the wine here makes me forget everything as it is too strong, and I was frustrated at not understanding the wine-making process as I had opted for the Spanish tour and I found the technical language too difficult. The only thing I remember was that if a red wine looks brown instead of dark pink, it is a very cheap wine which goes off quickly. I guess this is all I need to know in practice.
The second trip was to an olive oil factory which specialsed in making extra virgin olive oil. We tried different types of olive oil skin products, learned about the health benefits of olives and passing from the weakest taste to the strongest tasting olive oil we tasted each different type of extra virgin olive oil on bread. There was olive oil flavoured by red peppers, olive oil with a slight mustard flavour, and strong types of extra virgin olive oil. We were shown around a factory by a guide and had the olive oil process explained to us by a specialist. I bought some olive oil spray to stop my skin drying up in this dry
desert heat.
My favourite and last trip was to a smaller, family run wine factory where all the grapes were picked using scissors. They didn’t use pesticides or big machines to cultivate the grapes and they only grew red grapes, not white grapes in the vineyard. I tried four red wines and two of which left me with four tastes at once, all of which tasted like a different heaven and combined to leave me with dreams of holidays and good times I’d had in Europe. Apparently in Mendoza all restaurants allow people to bring their own wines which people buy from wineries as it is much cheaper and allows the Argentinian to buy the wine according to his taste.
I met some great people on this trip, I met two guys Esteban and Walter from Buenos Aires who were keen to speak English with me and ask me lots of questions about England. I was also sitting next to an Argentinian lady on the bus who had come wine tasting as part of a holiday with her three friends. During the journey she asked me all about England, told me all about Argentina and the places to
visit and we discussed our favourite types of wine and chocolate in great detail.
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