The land of bikes and wine is a nearby town called Maipú. (Having
lived in Buenos Aires, I started to realize that Argentina obsessively recycles
street and town names. No, towns don’t have a main street. But they almost all
have an Uruguay street, or a Maipú, or a Yrigoyen. Every province and town
pulls its name from a very limited set of sources: Argentinean presidents, nearby
countries, and Argentinean provinces. Occasionally I’ll be surprised by a John
F. Kennedy street, but never something so useful as School Street, or even
anything as descriptive as Fountain Road. Someone, somewhere, is just not
trying).
Visiting places dedicated to
getting you tipsy, or at least show you a good way to get tipsy later, and in
between traveling around on a vehicle entirely dedicated to balance sounded
charming. And it was. Fortunately, the travel time between wineries was long
enough that I never got really affected, though some other tourists did. (For
the most part, Stephanie and I biked around alone, though occasionally we met
up with other tourists making the same popular trip. Being foreigners together
makes people amazingly friendly).
The places to go
1. Our first stop was Museo
del Vino La Rural, a free museum that gave us a tour of the history of
wine making, their own groves, and finished off with a glass of their home-made
(well, museum-made) wine. This sweet red wine was one of my favorites from the
trip. Both informative and experiential, with a lot to see, this museum was a
good place to start of the trip. Especially because I didn’t drink wine often,
and really didn’t know anything about it except that it somehow makes you
classy.
History
Here’s what I’ve learned about wine (from Museo del Vino La Rural and Familia Di Tomaso tours). Wine – and
grapes – came over to Argentina from Europe, notably with Jesuit missionaries
in the 1560s. The Spanish brought the first wine, but the French brought the
grapes used to make Malbec, Argentina’s most famous variety.
Originally, grapes would be picked
by hand and collected in large leather sacks, which didn’t coddle the grapes
very well, and let a lot get smushed, and the remaining grapes would be juiced
by being stamped on. Later, around 1850, they upgraded to scissors to cut
grapes off the vines, and hand-cranked machines to crush the grapes and extract
the juice.
It
takes about 2 kilos of grapes to make one bottle of wine, although of course,
the amount varies by the type of wine. Red wine uses both the skins and the
juice, while white wine only uses the juice (hence the light color). Nowadays
the left over skins are used as fertilizers or to make oils.
Is it good?
Wine quality varies based on how the ratio of skin and juice
used, how much of the sugar’s been let turn into alcohol (you can rate on how
sweet it is, how smooth it is, and on how fast it gets you drunk), and what
kind of oak (if any) has been used to age it.
Growing
Roses are planted at the front of each row of grape plants
to act as basically the canary in the mine. If the rose plant starts to die,
chances are you’ve got a pest that will attack your grapes next. One grape
plant, at least in regards to Malbec, is good for 50 years. After that, it
loses its sugar content.
Aging
Argentina has no oak of its own, and imports from the US and
France, and, to a lesser extent, China. Wine ages as it is allowed access to
air, which is granted by the space between the barrel’s slats and by the pores
in the cork. (This is why wine bottles are stored pointing down, so the wine
stays in contact with the cork). Admittedly, the more it’s exposed to air, the
sooner it turns to vinegar, but with barrels and corks, the affect here is
negligent. If you deliberately don’t want wine to age, you can use a plastic
cork. Don’t think you can dump your wine in your basement then pull it out
decades later. Malbec wine only last 3-5 years before it becomes vinegar.
The oak also gives extra flavor and
aroma to the wine, which really does a lot for the experience. To give a smokier
flavor to the wine, wineries might toast the wood. French oak adds flavors of
tobacco and coffee, while American offers vanilla and coco. (French oak is
actually stronger and harder than American, another tidbit useful in
distinguishing them). Some makers will mix the wood in their barrels,
alternating slats of each tip of oak.
Proto-wine,
my term for the juice (and perhaps skin) mixture that hasn’t yet become a
drink, needs to sit until 25% off its sugar becomes alcohol. It takes about 20
days for white proto-wine to mature to real wine status, and needs to be kept
at 10 degrees Celsius. Red wine ferments in about 10-15 days, at 20 or 25
degrees Celsius (room temperature). The temperature of the wine rises during
fermentation.
The process seems interesting, and if it didn’t take so
long/cost so much (I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t have oak), I’d try my hand at
wine-making.
2. We
next stopped at Entre Olivos, which had tastings of olive oils, jams, dulce de
leche, and other spreads. Many of their spreads were fantastic, especially a
coconut dulce de leche. The place also included liquor tasting in the price. Some
of the flavors were nicely sweet and thick, but we were surprised to realize
they went down a little rough. The best (smoothest) liquors we tasted in
Mendoza were offered at just a random artisanal booth in a median in the city
street.
3. Our next stop was Familia di Tomaso, recommended
to us by the bike rental place. This stop was particularly great because, in
addition to a brief tour of the winery, which seems to have been in the family
for generations, they sat us down and showed us how to taste wine. First, they
brought out an un-aged Malbec. Smell it, then swirl it around and smell it
again, our guide told us. Now you’ve released the alcohol scent. Our guide
described the Malbec as a fruity red wine, with a light flavor of plums and
other fruits. They followed it up with a Malbec aged 6 months, which simply had
more to it. The scent was spicier and the flavor fuller, smoother, and more subdued,
with darker undertones. In one of the other wines, he told us to notice the
tannins. This compound, found in the grape skins, dries out the inside of your
mouth. I did feel a dryness or a puckering inside my mouth, but that could
easily just be due to drinking so much wine. We also tried a dessert wine, which
most of the tourists loved; to me it tasted like the cough syrup I had as a
kid.
4. We stopped by a few others, but at some
point, all wineries seem the same. They all offer tastings of the classic wines
like Malbec, and a tour. We decided not to explore many of the wineries, as
we’d already got a fair education in.
We stopped at just one more winery (I think it was Trapiche).
This one gave us 4 full glasses of
wine to split. I jotted down notes as I tasted, because for me, I process the
experience better and pay more attention if I’m trying to explain it. Merlot
was a dark red wine, thicker than Mablec, with a richer, although bitter
flavor. It was less fruity than Malbec as well. For comparison we tried a light
purple wine called Syrah. The flavor was lighter as well, lighter than Malbec,
and acidic and citrusy. None of the wines we’d had that day had been white, so
we ordered Torrentes and Chardonnay. Torrentes we were obliged to try, because
it’s unique to Argentina. I didn’t particularly like either of these; they just
seemed to have less flavor than the reds (but Stephanie insists these were poor
samples). The Torrentes was a light gold, and bitter. It had a weaker flavor
than the Chardonay, which tasted slightly acidic and smelled slightly fruity.
5. Our final stop was Historias and Sabores which
did not have much in the way of historias,
but held through on the sabores
(flavors) promise. I was still curious in liquors so we stopped here to try a
few and try their spreads. It was a picturesque little place, with a patio
outside the small storefront, and a view into their garden and grape vines. Their
most interesting item: a thick syrupy Malbec spread.
All in all, I feel like my Mendoza trip was a lot of trying
food, and wandering outside. A nice relaxing break after farming, and a nice
way to end my time in Argentina. The next night I spent on a bus back to Buenos
Aires, then I hit the airport insanely, irrationally early, and returned to the
USA on an overnight flight.
Travelers’ Tips:
Bicycle Tour
Mendoza is famous for its wine, and, in the tourism world,
almost as famous for its biking-wine tours. There are a few ways you can go
about this: you can pay your hostel to “organize” the trip, or you can go
straight to the nearby town of Maipú and do it yourself. Back to useful
information: at least with my hostel, what you get when you pay is a car to
come pick up you (and anyone else paying for the same service) and drive you to
Maipú, pick you up again the end time the service has chosen, and rent you your
bicycle. It’s honestly just a waste of money. Your other option is to take a
normal city bus (number 173) to
Maipú (costing about AR $2), and once there, rent the bike yourself from one of
the numerous shops. It’s been a while since the trip, so my memory for prices
may be off, but I believe the organized trip cost about AR$90 and the bike
rental itself only AR $25.
I rented a bike from a place called Mr. Hugo, which is
immediately across the street from the bus stop. The bikes were pretty good and
the seats relatively easy to adjust by yourself. I saw helmets there, which I
presume they’ll give if you ask; I honestly just forgot. Some bikes had a
basket in the front, so if you didn’t bring a backpack and want to pick up souvenirs,
that’s a good option. They give
you a glass of wine at the end of your trip, and a brief map of places at the
beginning.
Most bodegas (wineries) cost AR $20 for tasting and a tour.
If you’re hungry for empanadas, stop by the Beer Garden off
of Mitre street: they’re made fresh and in meat and vegetarian varieties. Be
prepared to wait though.
