July 21-24: Mendoza

Wine Tasting at Pulenta Estate, originally uploaded by Andrew & Yvette's world travel.

As a result of horsing around in Iguazu, I re-sprained my bad ankle and had to pass up skiing fresh powder in Las Lenas = ( So instead of swooshing in the snow, Andrew and I did another type of swishing, that of swishing wine. We signed up for a wine tasting tour and boy did we have the best, longest lasting buzz ever. We’ve never done this type of tour before and expected to have just one glass at each of the four wineries. We were so wrong. Each estate offered 3-6 huge glasses of wine!!! Even though we didn’t finish any of our glasses, our low estimate is that we each drank 2 fantastic bottles of wine that day. *hehe*

The following day, armed with the knowledge of how to taste/appreciate wine (smell, taste, swirl, smell, gargle/taste), we went to a fab wine tasting bar where we had some more excellent wines. Don’t think though that all we did was drink. We also ate! We ate a lot and we ate well! You see, Mendoza is like a fabulous boutique restaurant where the wines are exquisite and the food sublime. Great as Brazil’s churrascaria’s were they were no match for Argentina’s parrillada’s. Argentinean meat is great and the restaurants around Mendoza have really perfected the art of gourmet barbeque. As I write this, my stomach is growling for the rib eye at Q Grill paired with my Ruca Malen Malbec. The restaurants here really know how to pair their food with wine and one of our favorite meals in our lifetime is the 5 course wine pairing lunch we had at the Ruca Malen estate. *sigh* All this food write and all I have to eat is this salami sandwich = ( Better move on to Buenos Aires.