Mendoza

Got back into town late this morning from my little excursion to Mendoza. It was nice to get out of town for a few days and explore something different from BA. Imagine that you just spent 2.5 weeks in San Francisco or New York, you took a comfy overnight bus for 14 hours across the lush-turning-to-arid plains and woke up in.....Boulder. That's what it was like pulling into Mendoza. It's laid back, civilized, very green, and has good transit, a university, a central pedestrian mall and a mountain range for a backdrop. I love the fact that the sidewalks are very wide and tree-lined, unlike BA, where you negotiate crowded 3-foot sidewalks on most streets. Interestingly, more folks speak English in Mendoza than BA (I mean in relation to population of course). I think it is due to the emphasis on tourism in Mendoza.

I indulged in a few wine-related activities. Monday evening, I went to a wine tasting room called Vines of Mendoza. Its right downtown. I sat at a bar and ordered a flight of Malbec, the famous wine of Argentina. My "guide" Marcella, who spoke flawless English, presented each one and told me about them. To keep my wits about me, I ordered a cheese plate, which turned out to be enough for two and pretty much became my dinner. The wines ranged from a young wine, only 3 months in an oak barrel, to one that spent 10 months in the barrel + some time it he bottle. Argentinian wines are generally not to be kept in the bottle for more than something like 4 or 5 years I believe. They are to be drunk young. I enjoyed them all, some more than others. Other patrons at the bar included an American couple from Arizona and honeymooners from Toronto. We all chatted a bit. Also, I spoke with Marcella about Argentinian politics. That's a post all its own, so we will leave that for another time. A wonderful evening.

The other activity was a do-it-yourself wine tour by bike, which I recommend for the intrepid and patient. I kept imagining it would be like that Globe Trekker episode where Justine bikes through bucolic, rural France. I did have an experience like that visiting the first vineyard, a pretty stucco building which included a museum, called Bodega La Rural. Biking on a tree-lined road past vineyards made me grin from ear to ear! After that, it was riding long distances between posts on a busy street which didn't mark the vineyards very well. At least, there were bike paths on this busy street. I decided I wanted to see a large, more commercial facility that was farther away, but marked on a map I had received from the city of Mendoza. Well, the map didn't have all the streets on it, I lost the map I got from the bike people and to make a long story short, I got lost. I eventually got to that other vineyard, Bodegas Lopez, but the only tour going was in Spanish. So, that one was kind of a bust, but an adventure nevertheless. And adventure is what it is all about, right? So, I got to see both boutique and commercial bodegas, and try their wines. If you want to do this, but don't want to get lost and want lunch included, there is a guided tour offered as well. It costs more, of course, than just renting a bike.