Andeluna Cellars: Lunch Heaven

We loved the Andeluna Cellars lunch experience so much I decided it deserved it’s own blog post.

The setting is an open kitchen.

And the view from right outside the kitchen.

 It looks like rain but it never came.

 The menu included six courses and four wine pairings.  The great part of being at a fancy fixed price dinner at a winery is that they are not shy about refilling your glass.

1st Course paired with Andeluna Torrontes 2011.

Second Course, those are a type of beans that almost look like peas, breaded trout and rice croquette.

The Andeluna Reserve Chardonnay 2006 that came with the second course is officially my favorite Chardonnay ever.  I normally do not prefer Chardonnay but this was great.

Paty talked to them about every course.  The chefs were very friendly.

Third Course, Andeluna Reserve Malbec 2009 and pasta with tomatoes and parma.

 

This meat dish and also known as the fourth course was paired with the Andeluna Grand Reserve Bordeaux style blend.  It was a mouthful and went perfectly with the meat.

A palette cleansing drink as the 5^th course.  The official wine flights were over by now, so I switched back to the Chardonnay while Paty continued with more Malbec.

Desert.

The entire cost for two including wine and a tour of the winery after dinner was ARG 540 pesos or about $125US including taxes plus tip.  A bargain.

Mendoza, Argentina's wine country.

If you noticed the tepid tenor of the preceding Buenos Aires post, rest assured that you will not find that in the Mendoza post.  We LOVED Mendoza.

Mendoza feels as if you ‘discovered’ Napa Valley in the early 1970s.  There are supposedly over 1000 wineries in the state and it seems like it.  Wine grapes are everywhere along with the ever present backdrop of the Andes Mountain Range and more specifically the Andes Foothills.  It is hard to describe just how tall the Andes are.  The tallest peak (In the world) outside the Himalayas is Aconcagua at 6,962 meters.  It is located only 70 miles from Mendoza.  Thus the foothills come right up to the city.

The city itself is a really pretty colonial style town.  The main downtown area is an eight block by eight block grid, with a four block park in the middle and four more one block parks in the corners.  There do not seem to be many native trees, but the first settlers of the area made up for it by planting over 2,000,000 trees around town.  Mainly Sycamore trees like we had growing up in Richland, except much larger since the trees are on average over 100 years old.  The effect is that even though it was the beginning of summer in Mendoza, shade was everywhere and we never were particularly hot.  The trees really add a lot of character to the city.

We stayed at Modigliani Art Design Suites, another tripadvisor find.  It was a small boutique hotel with about 12 units.  It was lovely and Martin and Javier that ran the place were extremely helpful in booking any activities we were interested in.  We would stay there again in a second.

The first thing we did after checking in from the 13 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires was head to a small wine tasting at Vines of Mendoza.

Five Malbecs all produced  locally.

After that it was more walking around the city, followed by the soccer game covered in the footy post.

Day 2 I had booked a private driver to take us to wineries for the day.  Mauricio was very friendly and even improvised when I told him basically one day in advance that I wanted to see the Uco Valley and not Maipu.  The Uco Valley is located at 1200-1400 meters above sea level where most of Mendoza is at 800 meters.  It is approximately 60 minutes away, but the drive up into the Andes is beautiful.

Our first stop was Achaval Ferrer, on the way to the Uco Valley.  In retrospect this was our favorite flight of wines that we tasted.  Most of the good wineries in Mendoza are either owned by rich foreigners or joint ventures with foreign companies.  This was no exception, as it was an Italian winemaker/owner and four local Mendoza owners.  Achaval Ferrer owns all the vineyards that produce their Malbec.  Thus they have chosen to drop 80% of the clusters during the green harvest.  This basically forces the entire vines effort over the last two months into ripening only one or two grape clusters.  The effect works, the wines were fabulous.

Before I go on, let me explain about tasting in Mendoza.  It is not like we do in the states.  You ‘get’ to take a tour at every facility before you taste the wines.  The wineries are all very proud of their entire operation, and while wine has been made in Mendoza for over a century it was not until the 1990s when Malbec came to promise as a quality option.  In the past almost all the vineyards produced bulk wine.  The offshoot is they have a decent amount of very old vineyards mostly planted with Malbec next to brand new vineyards.  Most of the wealthy foreigners have also bought vineyards along with building beautiful state of the art wineries from the ground up.  The average winery visit is 60-90 minutes so only plan on 3-4 visits a day and you must have an appointment.
The next stop was Bodegas Salentein.

This winery is solely owned by a Dutch gentleman.  Thus you see a lot of crests and dutch style decorations.  The winery has three buildings separated about about 300 yards and surrounded by vineyards.  The first building is a chapel that looked gorgeous from the outside (we did not go inside).  The second building is a world class museum housing the owners personal art collection in one wing and the gift shop, restaurant and wine bar in the other wing.

The winery, 95% of which is underground.

Underground barrel room designed to resemble the old wine caves.  Really quite pretty with great acoustics.  They sometimes have small concerts here.

Tasting room and our guide.  The tour was in Spanish.  Beautiful Winery, average wines.

The museum building taken from the winery.

Next we went to Andeluna for lunch and our third winery. 

The lunch was so good that I think it is going to get a dedicated post (Chris's Edit: Yep, it did get it's own post.  Click Here.).  Paty and I have come to the conclusion that this was the best lunch and maybe best meal we have ever had. (No exaggeration, the entire experience was superb.)

That was it for our private tour with Mauricio.  Only three wineries, but a very memorable and lovely day.

Spending all this time in the wine country, through this trip and others in Australia, France and the US really reaffirms my desire to find a job in the wine industry.  I believe there is good wine throughout the world that just needs someone to market, expose and sell in order to become much more a part of the public conscious.  Mendoza in general has wine's that are superb and retail for $10, it is really an untapped import market especially when you consider the weakness of the Argentine Peso.

The next day in Mendoza we went from upscale private driver to downscale personal ‘driver’:

Yes that is Paty riding a bike.  Si Se Puede!

Welcome to Mr. Hugo bike rental in Maipu.

They had a wine bike trail set up so these wineries, of which there were at least 12 marked on the map, did not require a reservation.  You just biked on in.  It was a lot of fun, we ended up seeing pretty much the same people at all the wineries since we were all doing the same bike and wine day.

Mevi winery, Andes Foothills, My new favorite white: Torrontes.

Mevi winery, lovely day.

Mevi Winery again, we spent a decent amount of time here as the wine was very good and the tasting room was the first we found that was air conditioned.

Veteran readers of Tobinblog should recognize this old school ratchet style basket press.

After two full days of wine tasting we decided to change it up a bit and signed up for a rafting trip with Argentina Rafting.

Rafting in Argentina’s base camp.

Lunch was already cooking when we arrived.  It was delicious:

Sadly we have no rafting photos as we did not borrow the water proof camera again.  But here is me drinking an Andes beer, in the foothills of the Andes after rafting down the Andes River.

The rafting was fun.  We had five people plus a guide in our boat.  It was advertised as class 2/3 but was more like a glorified float where you got wet.  Which is fine as the scenery was great.  This is the very start of their rafting season, so it might get more adventurous later in the year.  A few years ago the World Championships of slalom kayaking were held in part of the river we rafted down, they left up the cable markers for the course and we could tell some of the markers are located in what is currently in about 3 inches of water.  As the snow melts, the river flow will pick up.

They did have internet at the base camp.  So I ‘watched’ the entire UW v Duke hoops game on Saturday morning via twitter on my iPhone.  Technology has come a long ways.

We liked Mendoza so much, we extended our stay an extra night and ended up doing 5 nights in Mendoza.  Sunday was a pretty relaxed day, nothing outside of restaurants were open during the day.  We tried to catch a cab to cut across town for our 2 PM lunch appointment and literally could not find one, the streets were eerily quiet.  Paty was thrilled to walk the 16 blocks, but lunch was worth it.

I just wrote this post while on the Bus from Mendoza to Valparasio, Chile.  In fact I wrote it entirely at the border crossing into Chile.  I’m not sure what is going on, but we have been sitting in the bus queue that is hardly moving for 2 hours and 4 minutes now.   I suspect they have one total immigration officer working.  The drive crossed over the Andes and the border is only about 1 mile from the pass summit.  It is an exceedingly beautiful place to be stuck.  But stuck we are.

(edit: The stop at the border was 4 hours and 1 minute (not a typo).  Apparently this is an issue they are trying to address by 2014.  If you take a bus from Mendoza to Santiago or Viña del Mar/Valparasio try to book the earliest bus possible as they are the first in line.)

Lastly, if you ever get a chance to go to Mendoza you should seize the day.  We really loved it.  The city itself is lovely and very relaxed plus the wine makes it even better.  I haven’t talked much about the prices, but our hotel was $94/night and most of the wine tours were very cheap or free, the most we paid was $10 but museum admission was included as part of the tour.  Food was really reasonable and a quality bottle of wine could be had for $12, splurging was $20 or $25.

Buenos Aires

Paty and I made it safely to Buenos Aires (BA from now on), Argentina via United Airlines.  Seattle > San Fransisco > Washington DC > 10 hours to BA made for a long trip.  And really United Airlines now charges for wine/beer on international flights.  We used Airline miles to get to Argentina and then we checked in at the Hilton BA in the Puerto Madero district for four nights utilizing all of Paty's Hilton points for the hotel.  (As an aside, ALWAYS sign up for the rewards program.  It costs you nothing and eventually the miles/points will add up.)  Here is a view from the pool area on the 8th floor of the Hilton towards the city:

Left to Right: Women's Bridge, Goverment Buildings, Pink House (Argentina White House) & huge Argentina flag.

 To get situated the next morning we took a city tour.  Here are some highlights.

Starbucks are everywhere.

Boca Juniors Stadium, La Bonbonera. Notice the Coca Cola advertising is black and not red.  Red and White is the Color of River Plate, Boca's historic rival.

El Caminito Street, La Boca District. Deserted as our tour started at 9:30 AM

Yes, that is Maradona on the Balcony.  Fat Maradona.

My First Argentina Beer, Quilmes.  It might have only been 10:30 but my body clock had me at about 5 PM.

A big steel flower, even folds up at night like a real flower.  Lockheed Martin donated all the material for some reason that was never made clear.

There is a big Obelisk in the middle of the city.  This is where Argentina people congregate to celebrate.  The avenue is BA’s homage to the Champs-Élysées in France.  It is 14 lanes wide and bisects the city.

This is the Plaza de Mayo or the May Plaza.  The pink house in the background.  Only a week later the president, Christina Fernandez, second inauguration was here.  The entire square was filled to capacity and most of the city was out to celebrate.  It is a bit strange being in the Southern Hemisphere two weeks before Christmas. 

Christmas in Summer

 The pink house again.  The balcony made famous by Madonna depicting Evita Peron in the movie Evita.

Inside the Pink house, you can go in after going through just a cursory metal detector.  Paty with the guards.  There were tours as well, but they were in Spanish so we just looked through the very pretty lobby for a bit and took this picture with the guards.

Argentina's version of the Secret Service?

This is the area we stayed at, Puerto Madero.  It is a kind of river walk/reclaimed warehouse district that is lined with restaurants and shops.  All the streets in this area are named after women and that is the Women’s Bridge.

In the background is a new area of Buenos Aires, it could just as well be from Vancouver, BC as it looks exactly like Yaletown.

The lobby of the Hilton is in the Christmas spirit.  The Hilton Buenos Aires was one of our favorite hotels ever.

Overall Buenos Aires is a nice city.  You could see most of it in a few days or get to know it and spend a month.  It is designed mostly like a lot of European cities and feels familiar even though this was my first trip.  Prices were very reasonable, this is most likely due to the Argentina Peso being in danger of collapsing, but $1 = 4.30 ARG pesos.  A beer in any bar outside of the tourist traps cost as little as 10 Pesos.

I could talk at length about the food.  So I think I will make a separate post for that as the food was very excellent.  Argentina has more cows than it’s population of 40 Million.  And all the cows are grass fed.  Most of Argentina’s population are immigrants from Europe, specifically Southern Europe.  The Italian influence is everywhere in the food and that is a good thing.

Footy (soccer) on vacation in Argentina post.

So if you know me, then you know that I am pretty much absorbed by sports in general and soccer in particular.  Thus when we decided to go to Argentina the first thing I did was look up the soccer schedule for Argentina.
To my eternal delight I noticed that Boca Juniors were playing at home on the first Sunday of our visit.  They are reputed to have maybe the most passionate fan base in the world and Boca's stadium, La Bombonera, is on every list of the most famous stadiums in the world.  Argentina won the World Cup in 1978 here.

But unfortunately procuring tickets became a problem.  The first thing we did upon check in was talk to the concierge about tickets, he was a big football fan but informed us that he was already looking for tickets for the game for other guests and we would be ‘on the list’.

We arrived on Friday and the match was Sunday, so I made it my purpose to ask everyone we came in contact with if they knew where I could get tickets.  It turns out that this game was the game that with a win Boca Juniors would seal the title for the year.  Tickets were literally impossible.

Not to be deterred as I firmly believe that with cash in hand you can get tickets to ANYTHING.  So Sunday at around 3 PM we hopped in a cab to the Boca district with the intention of finding tickets for the 7 PM kickoff and doing some pre-game festivities with the fans.  Now realize that Boca is no really in the best part of Buenos Aires.  In fact, it is widely accepted as the most dangerous area although there are a few very famous tourist streets that are safe during the day.  The cab driver initially thought he was taking us there, no problems.  But when he heard we were trying to get out and intended on finding tickets to the game and doing the pre-game, he literally refused to let us out of the cab.  It was too dangerous.  As Paty was laughing at me and giving me the full ‘I told you so’ treatment, that is the moment the dream died.

We watched the game on TV, the atmosphere was at the stadium was impossible to describe.  Boca won the title and the streets were packed all night with revelers.

Next stop, Mendoza and Goody Cruz.  Also in Argentina’s first division.  We arrived via the 13 hour overnight bus ride to Mendoza on Wednesday and the game was that night.  Goody Cruz needed one win in the last two game to qualify for next year’s Copa Libertadores, the South American version of the Champions League.  So even though it was then end of the season, the game had some meaning.  Here’s me at halftime holding up the imaginary scarf that apparently is not part of Argentina soccer.  I did get a goofy hat though.

Halftime, fake scarf and goofy hat.

As you can see, the attendance was pretty sparse.  It was reported to be 14,000.  With the majority in the supporters section pictured below.  The TIFO stays up the entire game like that.  And while this was still a bit of a sparse crowd, the supporters were still extremely active. 

Those banners stay up the entire time, good supporters section.

Two tickets in the best part of the stadium cost 125 ARG pesos, about $29.  Why it was an odd number was a mystery, but it seemed that men and women tickets had separate pricing.  It’s too bad that the pictures were at night as the stadium is in a beautiful setting.  There is a huge urban park situated above Mendoza and the stadium is about at the top of the park.  Behind the stand pictured above are the Andes foothills.  The sight is immensely impressive.

For this game alone, we counted at least 30 police officers in full riot gear, five with police dogs.  You can see them behind the screens shielded from the fans.  While there was no violence, it was a common occurrence for fans to throw things towards the pitch.  Many times they would hit those screens, mainly with plastic Coke bottles or some type of streamer that would string out and die about 10 yards from the field.  The entire field was surrounded by a moat between the fans and the pitch.  Yes a moat, not a typo.

That ends our Argentina soccer experience.  It was definitely unique.  I am still disappointed that I missed the Boca game and particularly La Bombonera, but at times discretion is the better part of valor.

Colonia del Sacremento, Uruguay

Chris's Note: Need to upload photos, hopefully tonight (Friday)

We took a day off from BA to do a day trip to Uruguay:

There is a very convenient ferry that goes between Buenos Aires and Colonia, Uruguay.  The fast ferry option takes about an hour to cover the 50 km across the river delta between the two countries.  Because you are entering a new country, even just for a day trip, you have to go through customs, immigration and passport control both ways.  My brand new passport now has 5 stamps, four just from this day trip to Uruguay.  This must be what it used to be like in Europe before the EU.

Hydrofoi.

That's me waving.

Colonia is a really cute little city.  But the key word is little.  One of the highlights is climbing this lighthouse:

Spiral Staircase up the middle & 85 degrees outside makes for a very sweaty veranda.

The view from the lighthouse takes in the entire city, a small downtown area and a crescent beach around the bay.

The city itself is a photographer’s dream.  Character abounds and the colors are glorious.

We had lunch at El Buen Suspiro.  This was another tripadvisor find.  I haven’t talked much about tripadvisor, but we use it constantly while traveling to find the best spots that likeminded travelers have recommended.  Highly recommended to find the best spots for food/tours/boutique hotels/etc.  We tried Uruguay wine for the first time there.  Honestly I never knew that Uruguay produced wine, but we had a unique red wine called Tannat.  It was good, but the atmosphere was excellent so I might have been biased.

Our little cave.

This was the small shared plate, it cost about $19 US.  Good values in Uruguay.

To get around the city and the surrounding area, we rented a golf cart for the day.  It was only $35 and worth it to just cruise around all day.

Look closely, that is the ONLY person laying out on the entire crescent of beach the day we were there.

One of the only attractions outside the city is the old bull ring.  Apparently it was built by an eccentric guy that thought Colonia was going to be the next big thing.  It was only used once.  This is it, you cannot go inside.

Fun to drive out there in the golf cart, glad we did not walk as this is all there was to see.

If you have time in Buenos Aires, I highly recommend a day trip to Colonia.  You could spend the night as well if you are ambitious but it’s not necessary.