Mendoza

Thursday February 2nd - Sunday February 5th 2012

So we said Goodbye yo BA and headed West to Mendoza, where 70% of Argentinian wine is produced, the 3 main zones being Lujan de Cuyo,  Maipu and the Uco Valley

Our small, but gorgeous, hotel was in the AltaVista district of Lujan de Cuyo, and we were very happy indeed to spend the first day just lazing there, catching up on the blog, doing a little wine tasting on site, and chilling (in 38’) after a pretty hectic two weeks.  The room was huge and so comfortable we slept until 10am, the pool chilly (cold nights), the dining and wines superb.  The young waiter, Mattias was fun, and knowledgeable of the area, the wines etc and he taught us to play Truco, a very tricky game to get the hang of, don’t think we quite mastered it!!

Our evening stroll – Andes afar.    

Next day, the 3^rd, was Mick’s birthday and we had reserved a table for lunch at the main Zuccardi vineyards – we had met Senor Jose Zuccardi, middle of 3 generations of winemakers in Mendoza, at a wine-tasting in HK, and he had invited us to stay at “his hacienda”! We didn’t take him up on that, but he and his daughter made us very welcome for a memorable lunch – the family have expanded from wine to a fine restaurant, an art gallery and the latest venture is in to olive oil.

The choices for lunch are either the 8 course “tasting” lunch which Mick opted for, or the 3 course asado lunch which I opted for as most of the tasting wines would be wasted on me.  Both were very good indeed – Mick’s was indeed exquisite, and after 8 different wines – and generous measures at that! – he was feeling no pain and well pleased with the world!

After the lunch we were taken on a personal tour of the olive oil project, past the Malbec vineyards to the winery and then to the tasting rooms, where we tried a couple more! With a sunhat, some olive-oil,  and a very nice bottle of wine we finally left at about 6pm – a very memorable birthday for us both.