Tag Archives: Mendoza

Vineyards of Mendoza: Sottano

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Dan assures me that in some ways Bodega Sottano was the most interesting of the four vineyards we visited. I missed many of the points our guide made, as I was struggling to keep the contents of my stomach where they belonged (see lunch, previous post). So here are Dan’s observations about Bodega Sottano.

This winery, it seems to me (Dan says), shows a great deal about how the wine industry has been able to grow so quickly in Mendoza. The winery is a first venture for the sons of a family with Mendoza winemaking roots. It’s relatively new, founded (I think) in 2003. Rather than investing a lot of money in building or landscaping, which are both fairly minimal, the founders have invested heavily in production capacity, using the most modern technology.

Aiming to make high-quality wines in the mid- to high-price range, Bodega Sottano is growing carefully. They currently use perhaps only a tenth of their winemaking capacity and rent the rest of their capacity out to others. This strategy has the dual benefit of allowing them to pay for the equipment that they ultimately want to be able to use, while at the same time allowing other start-up winemakers to make wines without any heavy initial investment in production equipment.

It’s a great win-win arrangement (Dan says) that shows how Mendoza could have moved from maybe fifty to maybe over a thousand wineries in just ten years, becoming one of the world’s top winemaking regions.

Vineyards of Mendoza: Melipal

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Our third stop on the winery tour of the Lujan de Cuyo is Bodega Melipal.

It’s the high point of the day in more ways than one. The first way, we’ve been expecting. More than expecting–looking forward to. We’ve been drinking wine all morning. We’re hungry, and behold! It’s lunchtime!

The lunch is beautifully presented, and each course is accompanied by a delicious wine pairing. The dessert and its accompanying dessert wine are a fine finishing touch.

There was a problem with the lunch for me, and perhaps me alone. The lone vegetarian in the group, I was given a main course of roasted or sauteed vegetables. It was beautiful to look at, and tasty, too.

But between the cheese it was covered with (and I with a degree of lactose intolerance and no lactase with me) and the oil (perhaps olive oil) it was swimming in, I ended up with a terribly upset stomach that stayed with me for the rest of the day.When I could barely even sip a taste of wine at our next vineyard, I knew the situation was bad.

I don’t blame Melipal for this. The place, the service, and the wine were all excellent. Just my poor luck.

The other delightful surprise about Melipal was the landscaping. This was far and away the most beautiful of the vineyards we visited–perhaps anywhere, ever.

After lunch, we move on to Bodega Sottano in the next post.

Vineyards of Mendoza: Kaiken

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Our tour of four representative wineries of the Lujan de Cuyo region of Mendoza continued at Kaiken Winery. Here we were treated to a walk in the fields to learn about the cultivation of the grapes.

Some of these vineyards contained vines seventy to a hundred years old; others were fairly recently planted.

Hail is a major hazard–in an area where climate is moderate, rainfall light, and irrigation pervasive, there are few hazards of grape growing; and vintages are consistent, year after year. The single major hazard is hail, which can fall hard and heavy, with hailstones as large as baseballs. Hail can ruin a crop in minutes. And so netting to protect the vines from hail, though expensive, is increasingly being used.

These vines are watered using water-saving drip irrigation. We also saw areas where the vines were irrigated in the traditional way through the use of irrigation ditches (acequias). The vines here had much heavier stems–they might have been older–but less abundant foliage. I don’t know how the grape production compares.

Everywhere, the early-summer grapes were beautiful.

In addition to tasting a number of Kaiken’s excellent wines, we were also given a taste of the wine still fermenting in the tank. It wasn’t grape juice any more; it was really wine! And–it was also excellent.

Next post: Bodegas Melipal and Sottano

Vineyards of Mendoza: Benegas

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We booked an in-depth tour of four vineyards through the excellent and friendly Ampora Wine Tours in Mendoza. The tour was an all-day affair that visited four vineyards. It included a luncheon with wine pairings at one of them.

The first winery, and in some ways the most interesting, was at the historic Bodega Benegas. The history of this vineyard, as remembered through the haze of a day of drinking excellent Argentine wines, is that the owner is the scion of a family of venerable Argentinian winemakers. His grandfather (or great-grandfather?) was Tiburcio Benegas, the founder of Trapiche Vineyards, who introduced French vines into Argentina over a hundred years ago. The owner of the current Benegas practically grew up in the Trapiche winery, but by then the family had sold the winery, and the young man went off to make his fortune in some other field–investment banking?–in Buenos Aires. But wine was in his bloodstream, and Mendoza called. And his fortune must have been in pretty good condition, too, for he was able to buy and completely (and beautifully) renovate the run-down hundred-year-old winery and vineyards that now comprise Benegas Winery. He makes some nine different wines (named after his many children) in the beautifully renovated old buildings. And good wines they are!

The entryway to the winery sets a tone of intimate elegance, with small plantings of grapes, along with other greenery, flanking the path.

Inside, the first building contains exhibits of old winemaking equipment and some lovely traditional wall hangings.

Much of the wine is fermented for up to eighteen months in French oak barrels.

It is blended with other wine made in larger tanks; and then the finished wine stored in the bottle for a year, in the old concrete fermentation cellars, an area of the winery that vaguely reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s story “A Cask of Amontillado.”

Unaware of the dark, ancient cellars with their suggested mysteries, kittens played in the sunlit gardens above.

Next: Kaiken Winery

Historic Mendoza

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The city of Mendoza has grown around an historic center that is organized in a square, eight blocks by eight blocks, with a two-block-by-two-block park, the Plaza Indepencia, at its center.

Plaza Indepencia

One block in from each of the larger square’s corners is a smaller one-block-square park. Here is one of them, Plaza San Martin, with its bold statue of Argentine hero General Jose de San Martin at its center.

Plaza San Martin

This small a scale makes the entire historic center completely walkable; and of course, urban-planning enthusiasts that we are, this means that Dan and I compulsively block by block have to walk it.

One of the most striking features of the city is its lush greenery–this, in what is essentially an arid, desert climate. Trees, mostly plane trees, line both sides of every street, making even ordinary blocks seem elegant and inviting.

Street in Mendoza

The secret to all this greenery lies in a system of irrigation originally pioneered by the original Huarpe inhabitants. A system of acequias (pronounced “ah-SAY-kee-ah”) lines both sides of every street. Acequias are irrigation ditches (it sounds much better in Spanish!) that bring water flowing from Andean snow melt throughout the city, controlled by gates (somewhere) that allow the flow now into one acequia, now into another. The trees are planted beside the acequias, where their roots receive all the water they need.

Acequia

Dividing the historic district west-to-east is the commercial Av. Sarmiento; the three blocks east of Plaza Indepencia comprise a wide, delightful, and crowded pedestrian mall.

Av. Sarmiento

No description of Mendoza would be complete without mention of its many restaurants. We especially enjoyed meals at the intimate and friendly Ocho Cepas (Eight Varietals… of wine grapes, naturally) and especially at the excellent Azafran, which instead of a wine list invites you *into its wine cellar* (not technically a cellar, but a climate-controlled room) where the sommelier helps select a very reasonably priced bottle of wine for your particular taste and meal. Like many restaurants in Mendoza, Azafran has a great outdoor dining area, but we especially liked the interior, where regional olive oils, spices, and other products decorate the walls–and you can buy them!

Azafran Restaurant