Oh. My. Blog.

We arrived in Mendoza from Santiago (12 hours via bus) on Wednesday. No, Monday? Honestly, I don't even know anymore. I think it was Tuesday.

It's official: I am finally tired.

Tired of planning, tired of chasing buses, tired of lugging my bags everywhere. I am a bit burnt out. However, I am not tired, of drinking the wine here in Mendoza, Argentina.

So far, I've seen a total of four wineries (La Rural, Cavas de Don Arturo, La Azul, O.Fournier). The first two are hardly worthy of mention. The latter two... where do I start?
O.Fournier. This complex looked like a spaceship had landed in the middle of the some vineyards. This winery has the latest and most advanced technology in all of the valley, and probably all of Argentina. There were four other people on the tour, all of whom had visited plenty of wineries throughout the entire world, but everyone agreed: never had we seen anything like this before.

In order to be more gentle on the grapes and the juice, the designers did not want to use pumps to move the wine, thus they built a winery that utilizes gravity flow (with different levels) to move wine from tanks to barrels and such. There are four different floors-- top level is where the grapes arrive and are hand-selected; bottom level is the magnificant cellar. In between are the tanks. Some of the tanks are four floors high, themselves. It was all so scientific-- from the modern architecture to the linear design to the chemistry lab to the labcoat-wearing grape sorters-- it was otherworldy.
We had a five-course lunch in their dining room where sampled four different types of their selections. I gotta say, I was more impressed with set up of the entire place than with the wines. It was excellent, don't get me wrong, but you could almost taste the clinical precision with which it was made. Maybe it was just me. Regardless, I wanna taste the love and passion of the people who made it! This brings me to...

Bodega La Azul. This lil' gem of a winery has a capacity for about 56,000 liters (O.Fournier has the potential for 1.2 million, though they currently produce less than half of that). Azul is family-owned, has a couple of wine makers, tiny tanks and simple, yet tight traditional setup. It was quaint and charming... and their wine was qual-a-tee. It is amazing how alert your tastebuds are at 10:30am. I was so excited, I bought three bottles. It wasn't until later that I realized my backpack wasn't really made for accomodating wine.

This photo has nothing to do with anything regarding this post. It is an image of the church bell in San Pedro, Chile. This is in the town where Mark walked into the street sign in the middle of the sidewalk. I laughed. A lot.

Heading to the tasting room for a flight or two (fancy!), then jumping on an overnight bus to Buenos Aires (12-15 hrs) this evening for the final leg of the trip.

Where has the time gone?