Ready to rock the new year in?
Santiago, here we are, ready to bring in the new year with a bang. I´m not exactly sure what we´re going to be doing tonight, but I´m pretty sure it involves watching some fireworks and drinking some sort of bubbly wine. Should be a blast.
We spent a couple of days in Mendoza doing some wine tours. On the 26th, we had our first tour, which took us to Lujan de Cuyo, the area directly south of the city of Mendoza. We first went to Altavista, then Benegas. Off to Decero for some lunch and finishing up the tour with a quick stop at Acheval Ferrer. It was a wonderful day, but our taste buds were completely blown by the time we were finished with the four wineries. Our guide, Muriel, was very knowledgeable and may very well be our first friend in Mendoza. We´ll see. We specifically requested her for the next day´s tour, partly because she was a fantastic guide, and partly because we were hoping she might want to be our friend. Oh well.
The next day, the 27th, we spent the day recovering from the wine tasting of the last day. We hiked around the Parque San Martin, down around town, and just relaxed a bit. Nothing too crazy. That was for the next day, where we hopped on a bus at 8:30am and headed down to Uco valley. We went to Jean Bousquet, where an incredible man named Steven Reiss took us around the premises. This is likely the most wine-knowledgeable man I´ve ever met, sorry Jeff. I´m pretty confident I couldn´t think of a question to stump him if I had a hundred chances. He´s just been in the wine business so long that it was a great opportunity to ask all those random, dorky questions that most people think are inane. He was happy to answer and we kept questioning him. There was another guy along with us on the wine tour who was an Australian winemaker. He managed to bring a bottle of his wine on the tour for Steven to taste, which was fascinating to watch as this wine master detailed a tasting of a mediocre (in my opinion) wine. Granted, better than I´ll ever make, but, well... yeah, I can´t say I fell in love with the Tin Garage Cabernet Sauvignon.
Leaving Jean Bousquet, we went to Clos de los Siete, which is seven french aristocrats, lead by Michel Rolland, getting together to pat each other on the backs. I may rant about the incredibly over the top
architecture and pretentiousness of the entire operation, but a few of their wines were actually really good, so there´s something to stand behind, I suppose. As Erin pointed out, though, the wine industry is just as bad as fashion when it comes to pretentiousness and preening.
Lastly was O. Fournier, which was a spaceship. That´s about it. Just a crazy spaceship in the middle of the desert, raising little clone vines for us to drool over. Fantastic winery, great lunch, can´t complain at all. I wish I could live there in my little space-pod.
The 29th we had to wake quite early to hit the road to Chile, which ended up being a beautiful drive. Perfect weather, not too much traffic, a border crossing left us hungry at lunch, so we stopped by the famous ski area Portillo. The lunch was good, but the views were better. Mountains sloping directly into a glacier lake with sun and clouds for a backdrop?
Yes, I suppose I can take a picture of that. Leaving there, we went down a curvy path that would be insane in RC-ProAm, let alone real life.
From there we had a quick stop by Errazuriz for a tasting, which was fun, and from there we were onto Santiago. We, of course, had managed to lose our Chile book, so we had the opportunity to find our hotel just by googlemaps from the previous day and a poorly printed map from the rental car company. Not really that easy in a town of 6m people. The craziest part about the trip was that we were getting lost, we knew it, so we rolled down the window to ask for directions. Of course, the first person we ask happens to be an american exchange student. Oh well. Welcome to Chile. But we did manage it without too much circling about.
Yesterday we took off for Colchagua Valley south of Santiago. It was supposed to be a 2 hour drive, tops. Well, there was a wreck on the main road so we had to find a roundabout way to get there. Lacking a good map, we decided to just go for it. We´ll make it! We had an idea that we could get there by going past this winery then taking a left, but that ended up being a little more difficult than expected since we took the 50km detour around an entire mountain range.
By the time we figured out where we were, there was a large mountain range in between us and the Cabernet noble grapes we were searching. If we were on the Amazing Race, we would have been kicked off the show for pure incompectance. But in the end, after 5 hours, we made it to Santa Cruz for lunch, then Montes for a wine tasting and tour, where we got to taste their syrah named Folly. Mmmmm.
Yet the best is yet to come. We were trying to find CYT, the tasting room for Concho y Toro. So we hoofed it for an hour or so to find a closed down building. One of the members of the group (who will remain nameless) had to use the facilities, so we go in search of a dinner place. As we pass United Colors of Benneton, Louis Vuitton, and other places I´ve never heard of but the ladies of the group where pawing over, we see a restaurant ahead. Perfect, we´ll go there. When we get closer, we see that it´s a massively black building. Black like the night, or black like ink, or black like satan´ssoul, this building had no light coming from it. But there were a few tables outside and waiters dressed in black. It was, of course,
Emporio Armani, the restaurant. Hilarious. I´m trying to hold back the laughter as two people in Chaco sandals wonder if they´ll even serve us. They did, and impeccably. The one snafu was when I tried to touch the bottle icing in the bottle holder. I just wanted to see what the label said, and suddenly there were three waiters running at me, saying, noooooooo!!! Don´t touch the bottle! I, being me, irreverently held it in the light at a 45 degree angle as drops of water pooled on the perfectly black floor, put the bottle back in the holder and calmly wiped my hands on my dirtly Carhartt pants. They loved me there. I guarantee Georgio would be proud to have me as his customer. Carhartts are haute fashion in France.
Today, we did a half day tour of Santiago, driving around town. It was great to be able to see a bit more of the town, get a feel for it all. We came back for a quick lunch, just biding our time for the big night tonight. Can´t wait to bring in the new year. I´m excited to see what 2010 will bring. A new world cup in South Africa, a new chilean president, a stay in Mendoza, some new jobs, returning to the US after years abroad, a wedding, and who knows what else. I´m excited to move onto a new stage of our travels in Mendoza, then to move back to the states and start over again there.