Mendoza

Mendoza, Argentina—–The city of Mountains, Wine, and Sun. Mendoza Province is the epicenter of the Argentina wine earthquake that is rocking the wine world. There are over 950 wineries here. Small one-person operations to mega-production. There is wine everywhere—billboards, stores, magazines, posters on the hostel walls, everywhere.

Geographically, this area is perfect for–take a guess–wine. The city of Mendoza is about 1500 feet in elevation. It is desert. However, it also sits at the base of the tallest peak of the Andes, Aconcagua. Water flows abundantly down from the high Andes, and the desert is alive. There are beautiful old sycamores that line the street. There are gardens on the corners. Flowers. Shade. All of these have been planted and irrigated through the years. Without irrigation, there is just desert, but there is irrigation everywhere. The canals run along the streets.

Wineries and farms–lots of olives and olive oil here too–have been established up the sides of the mountains. There’s a magic combination at work here. Desert. Elevation. Volcanic soil. It hardly ever rains here. Too much rain, or rain at the wrong time, can wipe out the grape crop overnight. At the same time however, there is a full and never-ending (?) supply of wonderful water. The elevation also means that there are hot days and cold nights. Grapes like that because they can produce lots of sugar. Also, different varieties thrive at different elevations and at different sun slopes. Wineries just a few kilometers away from each other can produce totally different wine.

Malbec is the most famous wine from here. Malbec is what makes Mendoza one of the eight wine capitals of the world. Nobody else does Malbec. California does Zinfandel, Australia does Syrah, Germany does Lieframilch, Italy and France have their specialties. But Argentina has Malbec. And a good Malbec is pretty tasty. We didn´t stay in Mendoza very long–four days–but we did manage to combine two of our favorite things, bikes and wine, in a bicycle winery tour. We biked to three different wineries on the outskirts of Mendoza, got the tour of the wineries, and we drank a lot of good wine. Martín has a little business, taking people around and talking wine. He himiself is a wine grower and a bicycle builder. Lawrence from Germany, Senon from Australia, and Joro from Bulgaria (our first Bulgarian!) went also, a total of six of us. Martin’s rule was, “If anybody looks like they’re too happy, I call a taxi and their tour is over.” We all were able to contain ourselves, and a great time was had by all.

Our first winery was a very small, very personal winery, named and owned and operated by Patti Caramelo. His name is on every bottle, and one of his impprters is in Oregon, so maybe we’ll find it in Eugene. Patti wasn’t there on the day that we arrived, one of the few days of the year when he’s gone. His three daughters are all involved in the winery, as growers and marketers. One of the daughters, Cecilia, talked to us about the winery and about wine. We learned how to swirl the wine properly, in order to produce what we English-speakers refer to as “legs.” These are the tell-tale traces of wine that release most of what we smell. I asked Cecilia what they call them in Spanish. They are called lágrimas. Tears. It´s more poetic and evocative than legs, and, I believe, more accurate. Running down a glass, they do look like tears, running down a cheek.

We also went to a couple of bigger wineries. We went into the underground storage rooms and saw some giant old oak barrels, and we tried a lot of different regional wines.

For the first part of our stay in Mendoza, we stayed in a little apartment in the back of a house. We moved into a downtown hostel after two days, just to be in a more central location. Raúl and his wife Mónica live in the house with their 18-year old daughter Vanesa, and Mónica’s 78-year old mom, Morroch. We talked a lot with them and learned about their lives in Argentina and in Mendoza. Raúls father was from Italy, and he emigrated to Argentina in the middle of World War Two. Raúl grew up on a farm, without electricity or running water. Now he’s in the computer and cell phone world.

He wanted to do a real Argentina asado (barbeque) with us, so we planned it. He asked us what time we wanted to eat. We knew that we were in Argentina, the land of late dinners, so we didn’t want to say anything too early. We said, “How about eight o’clock?” Raúl was appalled. “You can’t eat at eight o’clock! What are you thinking???”  “Okay, how about nine o’clock?” “Noooo, it’s still light at 9:00.” So, he came up to the terrace at 9:30 to start the fire, and at 1:30 am, we were still sitting around the table, along with Paula and Richard from Chile, who were also staying in one of the apartments.

One of the features of an Argentine parrilla (that’s the structure that is in every backyard in the entire country, where they cook the meat) is its size, and one of the tricks of the asado is to have a fire burning in one corner to produce coals and embers, while the meat cooks on the other side, slowly and evenly. The coals and embers are continually transferred, from the fire in the corner, to under the meat. Raúl was very good at maintaining the proper temperature. I got the feeling that he had done this before. The next day, we said good-bye and caught a bus into town. Here’s Moni with all of our belongings, waiting for the bus. In a few more days, we will be off to Salta, way up in the northwest of the country.Onward Ho!