Wine and Spanish

Alternative title: "It tastes like grape juice!"

We left Buenos Aires, as we planned, Sunday night. We finally got out of that individualistic, fashion centered city. Not to say that we did not enjoy some of our time there, but it was certainly time to leave. Thanks to Agustin, we had an excellent time our last night at Ña Serapia and then again on Sunday at the Rose Garden. We took the bus to Mendoza on what had to have been the best bus ride of the trip so far. Not only did the seats recline about 160 degrees (almost like a bed, we could have paid more to have 180 degree seats), but we also received dinner, a vegetarian option for Sarah, wine and a movie that was not too loud in case we wanted to go to sleep. It was awesome. It is a bummer that there are no buses like this in the US or else I would be doing it every time I travel from Vassar to Detroit.

Mendoza is awesome. Most of it was destroyed in an earthquake about 80 years ago, so there aren't any old buildings, but it is still a really quaint town and easy to navigate. The central plaza has a modern art and design museum underneath it and there are all sorts of different plazas, some of them really beautiful, all over the city. And most importantly, it is also the center for wine production in the country. We have been drinking a lot of Argentine wines and so we were very excited to see some of the vineyards and wineries. Our first day was spent exploring the city, so that was pretty low key. Our second day was awesome. We met up with Cindy, Sarah's friend from Women's Chorus and we went with her and two other people out to have lunch at a winery about 30 minutes outside of the city. Well, the winery should have been 30 minutes outside of the city but our taxi driver had no idea where he was going. We were really worried about getting there because we thought that we had a reservation for this winery, Ruca Malen. So, taking the scenic route (which was really beautiful), we end up at the winery only to find out that we did not actually have a reservation and that we could not have lunch there. We were sent down the road to another winery called Septima. This has the makings for a really bad day, but everything worked out. We get to Septima and after a little negotiation, we were let into the winery. The place was an interesting combination of modern architecture with variations on Inca walls. However, the best part was that we were looking at the snow-capped Andes in the background of the vineyard. It was truly a sight to behold. The lunch was fantastic, a four course meal during which we sampled their Malbec and their Tempranillo. Both wines were excellent and the chef was very creative in making Sarah a customized lunch. We followed lunch with a tour of the winery and got to see all of the equipment that goes into making the wine. I would have liked more detail on the process itself, but it was a good tour nonetheless.

Upon our return, we took a placement test at the Spanish school across the street so that we could begin private Spanish lessons the next day. Let me talk about dinner first. This whole day was an excercise in indulgence and it was awesome. We went to the restaurant in the Park Hyatt, overlooking the plaza. We decided that we would continue the wine tasting with different glasses with each course. So over the three courses we tried one white (Tapiz Chardonnay 2005), one red (Doña Paula Malbec 2005) and one dessert wine. This is what life should be like. We spent about 5 hours sitting at the table and loved every minute of it.

Back to Spanish. Since I need to improve and Sarah wanted to work on the subjunctive tense, we took three days of private lessons here. The teachers were really great and gave us both exactly what we asked for in the class. I spent mine working and vocabularly and comprehension while Sarah worked on her grammer. It was much better than the classes in Cuzco because the classes weren't too fast for me or too slow for Sarah. Private lessons are awesome and I learned a lot about the left in Argentina and the new President and the hope that leaders such as Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales provide Latin America. It was good conversation and at a pace I could understand.

And the rest of the wineries: We had one ok day and one great day of wine tastings. On the first day, we rented bikes from our hostel with the ambitious plan to stop at four wineries all in one afternoon. This was thwarted however by the giant group of Israelis from our hostel also accompanying us (they took a long time to get ready to go) and construction at the meeting point. We all took the bus while the bikes were driven out to us. However, the man with the bikes could not figure out how to get to where we were and this was a problem. So while we planned to start biking at 12 or 12:30, we didn't actually start until 2, typical South America. Then we learned that Sarah, big bikes, South American roads and drivers are not a good combination. So the we were going quite slow. We did make it to our first stop, Tempus Alba, where we enjoyed six small glasses of their wines (merlot, tempranillo, syrah, malbec, cab sauv, and their reserve blend) along with some green olives grown on the premises. The first three were not great but the last three were pretty good. Sarah made the brilliant wine tasting comments, "this tastes like Welch's grape juice," and "the aftertaste is kind of like jolly ranchers." Either way, the vineyard was beautiful, the wine decent and we ended up running into our friend Kelly who we saw Boca with back in Buenos Aires. We then went across the street to another winery called Viña El Cerno. We had to wait a long time for a tour and when we did it was half in English and half in Spanish. All of the English speakers were young while the Spanish speaking half of the group was quite old and grumpy about the fact that they had to share a group with us and that the winery was catering to non-Spanish speakers. One guy kept on complaining and Sarah turned around to indicate that she understood everything he was saying and if not him, then his wife was certainly embarrassed because she then said "stop it, they can understand you." It was a good tour and an ok tasting at the end. Neither of the wines, a malbec and a cab, were very special. So it was a long day and rough getting back. We had to walk part of the way because Sarah and her bike were not getting along. But we made it onto the bus just in time because a torrential downpour started on our way back. We spent the night eating our picnic that we packed and never ate and watching x-men movies with the little kids in the hostel.

The next day of tasting was a million times better. We hired a car and driver for about $65 for the day. First we went to a winery called LaGarde that makes a wine we drank a few times in Buenos Aires. It is exported to the US also and is called Altas Cumbres. We heard of it from a NY Times article and it is quite good for its price. Around $9 or $10 a bottle gets a good malbec or cab. This is their lowest end wine. We had a very good tour of the winery with emphasis on how they make their champagne, but they can't call it that because they aren't in Champagne, France. After the tour we had a tasting of their chardonnay and a better malbec. Then we got lunch with an Altas Cumbres white and a malbec. Lunch was very good and they did a cool variation on lasagna for Sarah with everything assembled in a bowl and then put in the oven, so they were made individually.

From there, we booked it to Achaval Ferrer which was absolutely incredible. We were with a family from Texas and the French winemaker. The winemaker walked us through everything, tasting all of the different malbecs that they make. They make three single vineyard malbecs, all with the same methods, to let the differences in the soil come out in the wine, terroir, very French. They also make a malbec blending the three vineyards that is not as good and finally a malbec-cab blend that was quite good. For the malbec-cab blend we were able to taste from the barrel and from the bottle to taste the maturation process. And with the single vineyard malbecs, we tasted all of those from the barrel because they make very few bottles every year. Finally, we were able to go down to the barrel room and taste their cab franc straight from the barrel. And all of this was free for Sarah and I, absolutely incredible. It also turns out that one of the Texans is a member of the Stolpman wine club, which is where I worked a harvest as an assistant winemaker before going to Vassar. So he and his wife have tried almost all of the wines that I helped make with the exception of the PiedraSassi which was a separate label started by the two winemakers there. So that was really cool and we talked a lot about the Santa Ynez valley and we know some of the same people because they have gone out there to taste, etc... That was an awesome end to the day of winetasting. I would have loved to buy some of the Archaval Ferrer bottles, but for the ones I wanted (the cab franc or the single vineyard malbecs) it ranged from $50 to $125 per bottle. I am not going to carry around a bottle that nice for two months from the heat in Mendoza to the cold of Patagonia, it would be a travesty. But they are exported, so maybe when we get back...

That was a great finish to our time in Argentina. We packed our stuff after the tastings and we left for Santiago the next morning (today). Brief plans: we go to Talca tomorrow to teach conversational English for a week at a high school. Then it is down to the bottom of the continent and back to the cold.