Vino in Mendoza

From Buenos Aires, we took a bus cross country to wine country in Mendoza, Argentina. We decided to try out our brand new, bright red, beautiful Bike 2 tent out during our stay and found a nice campsite called Parque Suizo. Arriving at the bus station midday, we walked across town to find the 114 bus on Ave Sarmiento.

Situated about 30 minutes by bus from the city center, Parque Suizo is equipped with showers, bathrooms and laundry facilities. We settled in quickly and were so proud to be owners of our beautiful new home - the red tent!

Home for the next 4 months

After a quick walk to the local minimarket, we cracked open our boxed white wine and started playing Spite n Malice and Farkle. The night was spent at our campsite playing games, eating dinner, and relaxing.

We woke up fairly early the following morning with plans to take a bus out to Maipu for our bike ride wine tour. Unfortunately, by the time we got everything figured out, it was too late to make the 45 minute bus ride out to Maipu so we decided to stay local in Mendoza and check out the city center.

After reading a few free magazines, two glasses of orange juice and a bottle of water, we felt like we had a good idea of what we wanted to do that day - wine tasting. What else do you do in wine country?

We found a great wine tasting room near Plaza Independencia called The Vines - we highly recommend it! The staff were extremely friendly; they poured us some great wine and talked with us throughout the tasting about the local wine industry. Mark had the Malbec tasting, which Argentina is famous for, and I had an assortment of reds and Torrentes. They told us about their property in wine country where single investors can purchase the land and they will grow the grapes, harvest, etc. for you - a great, fairly inexpensive way for all of the wine lovers to grow their own wine! Too bad Mark and I are on a budget or else we would be grape growing land owners by now...

Mark at The Vines

After a few hours at The Vines, we checked out a bit more of Mendoza before catching a bus back to the campsite.

The next morning, we again tried to wake up really early to get our Maipu winetasting in! We ended up having to wait for the bus for about 30 minutes and then the bus for Maipu as well, so we didn´t get out there until after noon. We were dropped off on the main road and from there you can choose from many different bike rental companies. We chose Orange Bikes - he was a very helpful man who ran the company from his home. He gave us a map, recommended a few wineries and wished us luck!

Our first stop was a chocolate, olive oil, jam and liquor shop that had tastings for 20 pesos. We felt a bit rushed due to our lack of time, but we still enjoyed some delicious snacks and drinks there! We tried the beer vodka liquor mix, which was extremely high in alcohol and pretty awful! We don´t recommend wasting 1 out of your 2 liquor tastings on it.

From there, we pedalled as fast as we could to our first winery, Trapiche. This winery was founded in 1883 and has been recently refurbished.Wine tastings are much longer in Argentina than we are used to in the States, this one took about two hours! The tour took up the majority of the time, with only about thirty minutes dedicated to wine tasting. I think we all would have been happy to just have the wine - it was amazing!

Trapiche Winery

After the tour, we had only one hour left to go before all of the wineries closed! Again, we pedalled as fast as we could to our next winery where we were hoping to get some lunch. Unfortunately, due to it being a national holiday, the winery was closed. By then, we were pretty worn out and knew that all the other wineries were closing shortly at 5pm. A bit disappointed, we began the bike ride back to Orange Bikes stopping off at La Melesca for a late lunch.

Most bike rental companies include snacks and wine after the tour, so we were sure to take advantage of it! The owner greeted us and brought out some chilled red wine (a bit strange for wine country, but perfect for a hot day) and snacks from cheese puffs to some sweet plums! We were joined by two American girls from D.C. and Chicago, who we got along with great. We spent a little over two hours talking and drinking wine before all catching the bus back to Mendoza together.

Vino and snacks at Orange Bikes

We spent one more night in Mendoza before heading southeast to Neuquen, Argentina. Neuquen was not what we expected so we stayed for only one day, which consisted of eating Parilla and hanging out by the river. For all of those expecting to visit the dinosaur museum in Neuquen, it is not there, but instead 100 km outside of the city. Unfortunately, this was something we found out after we arrived!

From Neuquen, we hopped onto the earliest bus Sunday morning and came here to San Martin de los Andes. We love this little town and are so happy to be near the green mountains and lakes again!