After Mr Hugo´s friendly welcome (seemed friendly but it was in Spanish, he could have been telling us we were douches for all I know but whatever he was doing he had a smile on his face), we had a look at the map and decided the best idea would be to cycle the to the furthest away vineyard we liked the look of out of about 17 and then make our way back more leisurely after having a few wines. Setting off as just us two we went at Jen`s slow pace as per usual (don`t hurt me when you edit this please Jen - nothing wrong with a leisurely bike ride Jack!) and arrived at the vineyard Familia di Tomaso about 10k from the rental place. After having a little look at the options we decided to skip lunch here and have it at the next place and just go for the wine tasting- Mr Hugo had given us a flyer meaning we got half price wine tasting here which was a bonus. About to enter the building, I turned around to notice two Aussie girls from our hostel rock up on their bikes. So we went in as a foursome for our first Mendoza wine tasting experience. Having no idea what a good wine really tastes like, and also a miniscule experience of red wines, I didn`t really have a clue what the lady was talking about when explaining the wines, even though her English was excellent. "Full body" this, or "hints of red berries" that, all I could taste was wine, so I didn`t faff about with all this smelling and swilling bollocks, straight down the neck it is like any good Loughborough graduate had been trained to do.
One white wine, two reds and a desert wine later (not full glasses but about 3/4 a small glass), the four of us set back off on our bikes back down the road we had just come from. With our legs still fine with only a bit of wine down us we easily got to the next place, "Tempus Alba" which would turn out to be one of our favourite vineyards of the day. Arriving there to see the vast vineyard, we set our bikes down and a bloke told us we could look around for free, which basically meant looking at some boards with English info first at the vineyard itself, then the cellar and then the fermentation tanks on the way up the stairs to the trying area.
The area would turn out to be a really cool outside decking area where we chilled out in the shade and received our next trio of wines to try. Now I say "try" loosely as this place literally gave us three large wine glasses each, all red except for one rosè which Jen had. Revelling in the joy of plentiful wine the four of us relaxed in the Mendozan heat and had a laugh together. Half way through our wines, I heard a familiar voice say `sweeeeeeet` and I could only see the side profile of the person who had made that sound but I was 90% sure it was another aussie girl that we had met in Ilha Grande, again in Parati and then again in Iguasu on both the Brazilian and Argentian side. I explained to the Aussie`s in current company that we had met this Aussie girl and she always said "sweeeeet", "awwwweeesssommme", "no waaaayyyy" and "coooool" amonsgt other things. The Aussies said that sounded like someone they had met but we thought nothing of it and after finishing up our wines we jumped back on the bikes and onto vineyard number three.
This vineyard was called Mevi and was the only vineyard we went to who promoted the fact it was Malbec day, the biggest wine export of the region. By promoted I mean that they gave us some free grapes used to make the malbec and also a free glass of the stuff. Don`t mind if I do Mevi. Sitting down here we decided to grab some food, with our 10% discount flyer from Mr Hugo and just another glass of wine to accompany the meal instead of getting the taster menu. Entering the room we were surprised to see a girl we knew from Pucon, who we had travelled with to Bariloche. After a quick catch up we sat down to eat only for that Aussie girl I mentioned from the last vineyard to stroll in who turned out to the person I suspected it to be, but randomly was the same girl that the two Aussies had previously met. With a "ohh my godddd" she hugged the other Aussies and catched up. With Jen and I sitting down without her acknowledging us we thought she forgotten who we were seeing as we hadn`t seen her since Brazil, only for her to just say "Oh I know you guys too" after what can only be decribed as canoodling the other girls. Oh well, at least she recognised us.
On our way out we came across yet more familiar faces, the two English blokes that we had met in Puerto Natales, the Navimag, Puerto Varas and Pucon. After a quick catch up and telling the girls we had met them in all of those places we realised we had never even found out their names! Whoops. We did find out though that these two blokes had gone for the tandom bike option, good lads!
Anyway, back as our four winos, we ventured onto vineyard number 4, "Trapiche" which was the biggest and most recommended of all the vineyards in the area due to the fact you got the best tour. With Jen falling behind with the pace again the two Aussie girls were way out infront only for them to cycle on past the turning to Trapiche. Too far out of earshot for my attempted shouting, Jen plonked herself in one spot whilst I had to nail it up the road to catch up with the girls and bring them back to the turning, depicted in this shot.
Back on track we arrived at vineyard number 4 and had to wait a short while for a introcutory video to finish which we had just missed so that we could join the tour from that point on. The video sounded boring anyway so we won that one. Being show around the massive winery we were allowed to drink straight out of one of the old stainless steal caskets, which was pretty cool. The only drawback was that the whole industrial area absolutely wreaked of fermenting grapes.
Holding our breath we got shown around some more and saw all the grapes being carted in aswell as all the skins and stalks being taken away after the juice was extracted. Again we were given some free grapes to try.
Here`s Jen about to eat some of those free grapes, much smaller than those you would normally eat but I guess they are more appropriate for wine production.
With the tour over we went upstairs to recieve our 10th and 11th glasses of wine (bit poo to only get 2 glasses on a wine tasting tour at this place, but was probably a good idea given how much we were drinking). With the guy describing the wines, all I could think was it tasted pretty much exactly the same as any of the other wines we had tasted, and tried to hide when he asked us all which we preferred as I genuinely couldn`t tell between any of them!
With the 11th glass polished off we went back downstairs, held our breath past the stink of fermentation and jumped back on our bikes after posing for a photo.
Done with wine by now, we thought what a great idea it would be to mix it up a little so the four of us went onto our final destination the "Beer Garden". Turned out to be a great shout where we were greeted by the "waitress" (who had some suspicious looking stubble on a rather strong jaw line but lovely painted red nails) who served us up a nice empanada and a beer each. Sitting down over our beer we all agreed that this "waitress" was infact a cross dressing man!
Half way through our beer, the two English blokes rocked up so we got them to sit with us. The cunning Aussies had hatched a plan to ask their names if we met them again which they did. So now our foursome was joined by the two Brits....Darren and Charlie. Pretending that we had always known their names we had a good chat finding out that they went to Trapiche also and finished up to find some blokes trying out their tandom bike, resulting in one bloke loosing control and riding into a wall who ended up going to hospital needing stitches. Lesson to be learnt kids, don`t jump on a random`s tandom bike with no tandom bike experience!
The two Aussie girls shot off early to get their bike back leaving me to finish of my drink as well as most of Jen`s and set off back with Darren and Charlie. Here they are on their tandom bike which provided comical scenes for me and Jen as they had to count down when they would start cycling to get going!
With our final drink of the tour complete we went back to Mr Hugo`s where a juice and a beeming face was waiting for us! Then we jumped back on the bus to the hostel and accidentally got off at the wrong place, which was a pretty big accident considering we were so far out of place we were off the city centre map we had. Not to fear though, Jack`s amazing Spanish as I manged to get some info of a local and we walked back for 20 minutes, as Jen finally had a smile return to her face when finding a road name on our map! Arriving back at the hostel we found they had put on a free wine tasting tour in the communal area. Not having had enogh free wine throughout the day we sat down for wines number 12 and 13 with a woman who actually knew what she was talking about and told us to smell the wine first, then swish it around and smell it to release aromas, then taste a little bit, then a little more and swill it round the mouth, then drink it from there. To be honest I thought that was all rubbish so I drank as I pleased. We then went out for an awesome burger at an Irish bar accompanied by a litre of beer with Kathryn who had recovered from her horse allergy the day before. Burger munched we strolled back to the hostel.
With crazy wine woman out the way we reverted to what we knew best, drinking games with the other hostel folk. Playing a new game where one person could tell anyone what to do, and wouldn`t you know it, I was that lucky person, I sent Jen to play standing under a closed big garden umbrella, another America bloke to go sit by her feet, Kathyrn to sit there with a pack of fags on her head and made another girl plank on the end of the table. I like this game! The America guy would end up getting so drunk that he got up and never came back again, only to turn up the next day without a clue as to what happened the day before. Funny thing was, it was his game and I got to be the guy who told people what to do. Moral of story is, don`t challenge Jackie to drinking games......he will win!
With Mendoza well and truely ticked, we jumped on another bus to cross the Chilean border (which was high up in the mountains), which would end up taking forever, taking us off the bus, scanning all bags, patting us down, sniffer dogs out. Turns out you can`t take any food products over the border (which Jack let me remind you we already knew!). Took well over an hour and at one point we saw a woman actually having a super serious panic attack, which was never nice to see. Can`t have been that bad loosing her onion at the border (that`s not actually what happened, no idea what set her off!) In other news the altitude made our pack of crisps turn into a balloon which I accidentally sat on causing it to explode and the bottle cap flew off our bottle of coke when Jen opened it, almost hitting some guy a few seats down the bus. Bare that in mind if you ever get to a high altitute kids!
Finallly back on the bus and on our way in Chile, we weren`t so impressed to see a ridiculous queue winding down the mountain, which ended up taking 3 hours. What fun.
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