Travel Blog by Rplum, , for everyone

Wine Tasting on Bicycles

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Rplum's travel blog in Mendoza, Argentina. She went on 18 of April 2007 for 6 days. She went for adventure, food. Rplum went with a friend. She got there and around by bicycle. Rplum's travel verdict is: recommended.

I don’t know a lot about wines, but I do know they taste so much better when you’re relaxing within the vineyards of Mendoza up in the Andes of Argentina.

80% of Argentinean wine comes from Mendoza, apparently it’s the cool winds, rich soils and endless days of pure mountain sunshine which provide the perfect environment for grapes up there.

I’d never really been meticulous about checking wine labels, so I decided I needed to know more about the good stuff....

I hired a bike from the centre of Mendoza and cycled my way out into to the wine country, along shaded leafy roads.

Stopping at the first vineyard, I took a free tour around the complex, where I could investigate the procedure of squashing the grapes, processing them in large vats and finally being stored in row upon row of oak barrels in a darkened cellar.

The grapes looked and smelt pretty revolting in the beginning stages. Plus it was only 10am, I wasn’t keen on tasting the stuff.

Alas, after the tour we were led into the tasting room. How could I refuse? I tried a couple of white grape types before hopping back on my bicycle in the direction of the next vineyard. Perhaps it was the two tasters which made me feel such an exhilarating feeling peddling on my bike in the sunshine amongst the vines.

woody and musky?

The next vineyard focused less on the making of the wine, more on the tasting.

There was a gorgeous open terrace, where I sat back and tasted 3 different (and quite full) glasses of reds, a Malbec, a Tempranillo and a mixture of the two grapes. It was rather hard to distinguish them after several sips, never the less, the novelty of sipping on these lovely wines whilst looking over the very place where they’d been cultivated under the blue skies of the Andes, was fabulous.

By this stage, my coordination was faltering. After another mal-coordinated cycle I arrived at the next vineyard which produced not just wines, but natural alcoholic liquors!!

After seeing the natural laboratory, I tried toffee liquor with choc chips and a TASTY banana mint concoction. These were truly delicious… I bought a few to send home..

... I like to think that I orchestrated well the mounting of my bike for the journey home, but truthfully, I’m pretty sure it was extremely wobbly.