Wine country

After a long night flying from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires, we arrived early this morning in Mendoza.

The weather is a lot cooler than expected, but that is probably a good thing.
What is not good is that we're now both fighting a cold, which is something I feared with all the different weather changes. Just when I need my tasting palette!

Visiting wineries
In France, there are two ways to taste wine: pull up directly at the winery and walk in or go to a tasting caveaux in a city.

Here it is not so simple. Wineries expect reservations for the most part, and worse, they also expect you to do a tour. Now I've been to all sorts of wineries, and quite frankly I don't want to hear about how grapes are grown, etc.

What I want to do is taste the wine. Oh, and buy it if I like it.

In France this was done for free, which was nice, but usually came with a guilt trip to buy wine. I'd rather pay a token fee and get a nice sampling.

Wine country - not quite what I expected
Driving through Spain, France and even Canada's wine country, it is very picturesque. Here, driving down Ruta 40 you see a bunch of industrial-looking buildings, dust and some wineries.

We pulled off the main road to a quieter parallel one and it got better. Still, there was a touch of ghetto versus sprawling vines everywhere you look in other countries.

Finding your way
I was hoping with the big push towards wine tourism that there'd be more signs to help me find my way. I was lucky enough to get through to a winery and book a tour before we landed at our hotel. The only problem was that we couldn't find it and was too tired to try.

Instead we found a large winery - Bodegas Norton. We pulled up to be met by a security guard. (Yes, a security guard) I told him that I would like to try some wines, and he put me on the phone with someone inside.

She told me that I needed a reservation, but no problem, there was an English tour at noon that I could go on. I told her that I didn't want to go on a tour and just wanted to try wines. She told me that I could try wines after the tour.

Noticing they had a restaurant, I asked if we could instead just eat at their restaurant. Sure, but I would need a reservation. Luckily this wasn't a problem - which was obvious when we got in, seeing that there was no one in there!

The meal
I got a choice of 5 dishes, of course paired with their wines. To me this is the best way to try wines, as it really allows you to experience its character.

The food was stunning, and the wine was pretty good too. But quickly fading, we wanted to get on our way to our hotel.

Before we left I wanted to pick up a bottle at the shop. The problem? No one was there! So I went back to the restaurant and asked if someone could assist. We waited for over 5 minutes and ended up leaving without success.

Looks like the wine tourism industry needs some work.