Mendoza (part 3: Friday)

Ok, so Friday.  Friday was wine-tour-on-bikes day.

·         We left the hostel at 9:30am  to start our tour (and the “we” has expanded to the original 7 as well as three new friends,  César, Megan and…another girl whose name I cannot remember right now)

·         We toured four wineries and an olive oil making place, one of the wineries was an organic place, and it was pretty neat.  We also got to taste at least two different wines at each place.  That is a lot of wine.

·         After the tour we hung out at the place we started, ordered some empanadas and talked for a bit before heading back to go to bed.

·         [Note: the bullets are WAY less interesting than the actual posts…they’re really brief…and it makes it sound really boring, it actually was really fun and I had a good time.]

  They picked us up at around 9:30 to take us to the “home base”.  Ok, so the “they” there is the group that runs the tours, and the reason they were able to pick us up is because they are a program through the hostel and so instead of paying the company, the cost for the tour was charged to our account at the hostel and would be added to our total charge.  So they picked us up, and the “us” here is not only the 7 of us from IES, but also César (a guy that Drew and Emily met before the program started while they were in Bariloche, he’s studying in Córdoba this semester (which is another city in Argentina)), and two of Emily’s other friends Megan and her friend whose name I still can’t remember… (who are studying in Santiago, Chile this semester).  So anyways, we split up into 3 taxis (pre-paid) and headed over to their…base?  I mean, they had a little shack in the middle of a parking lot, next to an old winery which is now more of a museum.  So I don’t really know what to call it. 

Needless to say, that museum-winery was our first stop and we learned about some history of that particular winery as well as a bit about the process of how they made wine.  One of the things we got to do was actually crawl inside one of the cement holding “rooms” for the wine (it was empty of course…) and it was ginormous.  It was a giant room, made of cement, to hold wine.  The ten of us, as well as the family of 5 that was on the tour with us were all able to easily fit with plenty of room to spare.  Also, if you even whispered it echoed around for about 15 seconds.  It was crazy cool.  I’m sure there are pictures somewhere…and as soon as I find them…I’ll think about posting them to my blog but probably never actually get around to it…I’m just going off of patterns here, though…

After getting a tour of the facilities, we were able to taste 3 different wines.  Of course they were all great.  I remember there was a dessert wine we tasted, which smelled a little like molasses, but tasted like honey.  It was very sweet, and I kind of liked it, but not right after tasting two red wines that were more…wine-y.  Right next to the counter that had the wines and glasses was a little girl—I think she was the tour guide’s daughter—who was like, 7 years old, and she was selling friendship bracelets for 5 pesos and necklaces for 2 pesos.  That little girl made bank off of us.  She actually ran out and had to special make a bracelet for César.  I ended up buying a necklace (one of the only things left by the time I realized I’d look like a total jerk if I didn’t buy something) and it’s now one of my favorite pieces of jewelry I have.

After hanging out for a bit and tasting wines, it was time to actually start the bike part of the bike tour.  So we all picked our bikes, adjusted our seats, and went on our merry ways.  Because the story is pretty much the same for every single wine place we went to (a tour of the facility, learning about the process of making wine, tasting wine, and hanging out for a bit in case anyone wanted to buy a bottle) I’ll spare you the super repetitive story and just highlight some cool things.

 

The second place we went was a much more modern winery and so instead of so many old wooden barrels (of which they still had some) there were many more modern steel containers in which they held their wine.  We also ran into another IES student and her dad here and so that was kind of cool.  Here we were able to try one of their champagnes (Annalise has all the names written down…but I don’t, so it shall remain nameless for now) and it was so good.  Like, SO good. 

After that we went back to the “base” where normally the tours go to an empanada shop down the street, but because it was Good Friday, they were closed.  This was a bummer because we were all getting really hungry…also we were needing to get some food in our bodies before we drank some more wine…some of us needed this more than others.  The good thing was that we ended up getting the better deal.  At the next vineyard we were going to, there was also a restaurant, and so we were going to eat there, the only thing was that it was 6 kilometers away.  It wasn’t too terrible, and I mean, it was a great way to work up an appetite!

This particular vineyard was an organic vineyard.  And thus, all our food was organic as well; also the restaurant was outdoors, practically in the fields, and golly it was pretty!  At the other places, we didn’t get to see any of the fields, but here they went on almost as far as the eye could see.  So after hanging out and eating a three course lunch, we got a tour of their winery and a lesson on how much better organic is than regular.  This was the only place where any of us bought wine, and we ended up getting 3 bottles to share at some later date (spoiler alert: it ended up being Saturday). 

After the organic place, we went to one last stop, and this one was not a winery, but an olive oil manufacturing place.  Apparently, wine and olive oil are the two main exports of Mendoza. Who knew?  It was really cool to see how the olive oil was made (and this tour was MUCH shorter than the others), and it was really delicious to taste the oil on some bread.  However, at the end of this tour, people were pretty much ready to head back and chill.  At this point, it was probably around 6:30 pm or so (yeah, super long day!) and so we headed back to the “base” and there we tried some patero wine, which was homemade…which means it was made by people actually stepping on the grapes to crush them.  For those of you who don’t speak Spanish (or just didn’t make the connection) pata is “foot” and so, well, I'm sure you can see the connection...

All of us were incredibly hungry at this point, and someone suggested ordering some empanadas to be delivered; after debating about whether or not that would be dinner or just a snack, we decided it would be dinner, got a count of how many empanadas each person wanted, and placed an order.  I believe the order was placed around 8:00 or so, and they didn’t get there until like, 9:00.  We spent a couple hours just talking and relaxing, eating empanadas, drinking wine and beer (they brought out beer as well…) and at around 9:30 we started to call for taxis to start picking us up.  We left in waves…waves that were dictated by the arrival of taxis, and the night came to a peaceful end.

Pretty much as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was asleep.  I thought it might be a good idea to sleep as much as possible, seeing as how the activities planned for the next day was, wait for it, zip-lining.  Oh yeah.  But, that is the next day, and thus the next post. 

Until tomorrow,

Kiki