Of the three major wine sub-regions in Mendoza, Lujon de Cuyo is the oldest, located just to the south of the city of Mendoza, but within the Mendoza wine region.

At Finca Adalgisa, we woke to the songs of the local rooster, crying claims to his domain. His bold hens even came to our porch and tried to enter our room, to which we regretfully had to object.

A translation note: Many of the boutique hotels at Argentinian vineyards have “Finca” in the name. It means the same thing as Estate in the names of vineyards in the US or Domaine in the names of vineyards in France.

My hope for early coffee was a disappointment, as the other guests arrived before I did and wiped out the coffee supply. It didn’t bother me that much; we were so exhausted the night before from 30 hours of travel that we slept like the dead and I woke up much later to which we are accustomed.

Breakfast was uneventful: a small selection of breads, cheeses, and ham, with an option for eggs. At least the coffee was good.

As we did on our first day in New Zealand, for our first day in Mendoza I arranged a tour for us. In New Zealand, the purpose was more to acclimate ourselves to driving on the left-hand side of the road, the goal being doing wine tastings while letting someone else drive. In Mendoza, the goal was to acclimate ourselves to how bodegas handle arranging and carrying out tasting events without having to do all the planning ourselves.

Normally when we are in wine country, I prefer to do the research and choose places to visit based on vineyard reputation, good reviews from experts and friends, and other helpful trivia that I find in wine publications. Because the elevated stress of a new place in which we have never been, it is comforting to let someone else handle the logistics. Sometimes this means that we visit substandard tasting rooms for which the tour guide receives kickbacks, but that is not always the case.

One note in this regard specific to Latin America and Spain. In the English-speaking world, we refer to the places where we do wine tastings as tasting rooms. In New Zealand, we discovered that this magical place was referred to as cellar doors. In the Spanish-speaking regions, these places are referred to as bodegas, which translates to cellar. I make this point simply to define my subsequent uses of bodega as it occurs.

The tour was to involve four bodega visits, punctuated by a gourmet lunch at the last.

Our guide, Andrea, a Mendoza native and winemaker, picked us up at the hotel. To my surprise, we were the only ones on the tour. For some reason I had expected a bus with several other couples from around the globe, as we had experienced in New Zealand, but it was not to be in this case.

Stop #1: Carinae Bodega y Viñedos

The experience included a tour of the vineyard, followed by a wine tasting. The tour of the main production facility introduced us to the “huevo”, which is an enormous, concrete egg that is used to age wine, as an alternative to the oak imparted by French and American barrels.

Andrea had chosen this place because she had a good relationship with the owners and liked their backstory. The owner had acquired the vineyard from the original French owners, who moved back to France after the sale. The new owner branded his wines on the story that he had to get through 59 girlfriends before he made a wife of the 60^th. This history is illustrated on the “Yoli” Malbec with a label that shows 59 hash marks to represent those relationships.

At first I thought the owner was Hungarian because of the name Kalós.

The name is actually Greek, the S at the end with the English 'S' sound rather than the 'SH' that I mistook for Hungarian.

Overall impression of Carinae Bodega y Viñedos: Nice Yoli Malbec and interesting owner history. However, their inability to ship beyond Mendoza made it not worthy of further consideration.

Stop #2: Bodega Pulmary

Of 700 vineyards in Mendoza, 40 are certified organic. This is one of them. Rami, the winemaker, went to oenology school with Andrea, which earned him a place of honer in her places to bring tour guests.

The original facility was a 100-year-old abandoned vineyard that was brought back to life and modernized to process and age wine. We received empty wine glasses after which we went downstairs to sample new wine directly from the barrels.

We tried some amazing Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, which would be even more amazing after aging and bottling.

We also got the opportunity to personalize the wall with a note that we had been there. This graffiti is my and Lorna's Arabic names.

Rami mentioned something that may help us with inability of many of the bodegas to ship to the US. There are individual importers in the US that we can contact that have partnerships with many of the winemakers in Mendoza. This is going to be helpful in acquiring some wines that we want but would otherwise not be able to get.

Overall impression of Bodega Pulmary: I loved the barrel tasting, which was the first time for me to do that, and excellent Malbec and Cab.

Stop #3: Bodega Carmelo Patti

Upon arrival, we found a crew operating a bottling machine in the driveway.

We did a short tour of the facility, led by one of Carmelo Patti's daughters. This was a challenge for both of us because she only spoke Spanish, but our guide was able to stop at intervals to summarize in English. I understood about 50% of the Spanish but the interpretation helped fill in the rest.

Overall impression of Bodega Carmelo Patti: Amazing Malbec and first time to see the actual bottling process in action. That might not be featured upon a return visit because they rent the machine only when they need to bottle.

Lunch: Fugon, Cocina de Viñedo

Our guide dropped us off for an outdoor, seated gourmet lunch, which was more than we had expected. There were several courses, each accompanied by a wine pairing, featuring wines from Vinos de La Garde.

This ended our tour and we returned to Finca Adalgisa to decompress.

A note about suppertime in Argentina: They tend to eat late. Most restaurants don't even open for supper until after 8PM. It is just one of the cultural facts that we have to get used to. At home we eat much earlier in the evening because I don't like going to bed with food still in the belly.

This particular evening, we made plans to return to Finca Adalgisa's Wine room, where they were serving “ojo de bife”, which is a traditional Argentinian ribeye.

There was so much food, we had to seriously pace ourselves to get through it all. During this time, my friend Negrita found me (as cats tend to do) and stayed with me until we left for the evening.

Next up - Day 3: Travel South to Valle de Uco

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