Travelling with Taryn and Brad: Brad's Favourite Day Yet!

Our third day in Mendoza we went to the Uco Valley (or Valle de Uco en Español). This is one of the newer regions of wine making in Mendoza and is nestled right up against the Andes Mountains. Most of the vineyards are at about 1200m above sea level. The stage that this wine growing region is being compared to right now is the Napa Valley region in the 1970s (Andrea, Danielle, and Alex - that should give you some perspective.... Or maybe not??). In this region we visited 3 wineries that were much larger and more commercial than the Luon de Cuyo wineries from yesterday.

We did an official wine tour with Trout & Wine tours. Our guides were great! Brad and I were last to board so we were sitting right near the front of the bus with Ivan (our driver) and the guide for the day (whose name I've forgotten...). We learned a lot of random Argentinian info. Like there is a Spanish word made up of soccer phenom Lionel Messi's name that means "Awesome". So if something is awesome - you can say it is "inmessionante".

Our first winery was Pulenta and wasn't officially in the Uco Valley, but it was on the way, and apparently a favourite of previous guests. They don't often get to come to this winery, so it was a treat for us. Especially for Brad!

Pulenta is the official winery of Porche! Who knew?! They had two working Porche engines and the one in the middle is a Ferrari F1 v12 engine!! They used to also be the Ferrari Winery until Ferrari brought everything back to Italy. The owner of the winery asked in jest to have an F1 engine as a parting gift, and Ferrari sent one! (or something like that... I honestly wasn't listening and was scolded by a member of our group hours later for asking how they got a Ferrari engine when they were the Porche winery)

The tasting was terrific as well!! Before we tasted the wines, we played a "game" where all 12 people in the tasting had to do blind smell tests. This was to show how hard it is to locate certain smells when you can't see them. It was tough! Some were really easy (like coffee and chocolate) but some were so hard to place! Like bell peppers, oregano, and even vanilla! It was a great tasting experience for sure.

Afterwards we took a look at the vines from afar - it was raining.

They have Kevlar netting to protect the vines from hail! Apparently the hail can be like softballs.

They even had a science lab there! Who knew?!

Our next stop was actually in Uco Valley - Sophenia.

To be honest... I wasn't super impressed with the wines here. What I was impressed with was this crazy cellar full of wine!!

Look at the awe in my face! The ceilings were 12 feet high and it was stacked solid with bottles they were aging! Another highlight of this winery was when Brad asked "donde est la bano" and the WHOLE group was taken on a behind the scenes look at the wine warehouse and bottling plant!! It was awesome! I kinda wanted to put my forklift skills to use. ;)

Pretty cool!

Our last winery was by far my favourite. Andeluna. We had a 6 course meal with wine pairing and everything was unbelievably good. To the point that I actually bought a bottle of wine that I have been toting around Argentina with me!