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mendoza

Taste the top of Argentina in Premium Tasting

by Amanda Barnes July 12, 2015

The Premium Tasting returns to Mendoza in August for a tasting like no other. Selecting the top scoring wines in the country (91+ points according to Tanzar and Decanter), they are presented blind to an audience of winemakers, sommeliers and wine enthusiasts in a day where you not only get to taste the top of the country, but also hear from the winemakers after the wines are revealed.

While the blind tasting is the most hotly attended of the events, there is also a day of talks and clinics the day prior which is more than worth its value. Always inviting some of the most authoritative figures in the wine world in Argentina, you can expect talks this year from winemakers Alejandro Vigil, Sebastian Zuccardi and Egardo del Popolo as well as other leading figures in research and technology. The talks (in Spanish) are covering diverse themes including: Argentine Bonarda, the evolution of wine, alternative toasting methods for winemaking, and Uco Valley terroirs.

For more information or to book your place on the 13th and 14th August, contact Nicolas Aleman at [email protected] or visit the website.

July 12, 2015 0 comment

Mendoza Features By Region Argentina Features Travel & Culture

A runner’s guide to Mendoza

by Jacqueline Newell July 9, 2015

written by Jacqueline Newell

A diet of asado and wine isn’t easy on the calories. In order to keep everything in balance, many locals turn to running. Whether you’re a casual jogger or an experienced marathoner, Mendoza fosters a large community of runners of all ages and abilities. With sunshine year round and a dry climate, runners in Mendoza enjoy the backdrop of the Andes at all hours of the day. Here are the best spots to head to for a good run in wine country:
Parque General San Martin
The park can be accessed by winding your way through the Quinta or Sexta sections of the city. Once inside, the safest section for runners is the peatonal, a walking path that circles the park’s lake. A lap around the peatonal makes for a solid 2.5 kilometers. If you choose to wander away from the lake, a running partner is strongly recommended.

Cerro de la Gloria
Located within Parque General San Martin, Cerro de la Gloria is a great workout for walkers and runners. Located next to the Zoo, Cerro de la Gloria’s steep inclines are a great workout with an even better view. At the top, take in a panoramic view of Mendoza and climb the stairs to the monument of San Martin. Be careful when descending, sand and small rocks can sometimes make for a slippery path.

Parque Benegas
Located in Godoy Cruz, the continuous trail is great for distance running. The park follows the trail of paved over train tracks that wind through barrios and parallel traffic. Take in the local street art on the backs of buildings and weave through playgrounds.

Parque Central
While Parque General San Martin is a haven for the outdoorsy folks of Mendoza, Parque Central offers a distinct people watching experience. Make your way a bit out of town and observe the views of afternoon picnickers, dodge aerial gymnasts, or pop inside Nave Cultural to learn about upcoming events.

Cerro Arco
Everyone in Mendoza will suggest you take a trip to Cerro Arco, whether you are a runner or not. Located in Las Heras, just outside of the city center, the Arco usually takes about an hour and a half for the average hiker. However, more experienced trail runners can take on the mountain much faster. Grab some sturdy shoes, pack some water, rent some trekking poles and take on the Arco!

Admittedly, getting to these locations can be a game changer. Be sure to watch out for acequias (deep, uncovered water channels) as you go. Sidewalks can be crowded, your spandex will be questioned and streetlights will become your ally. And who knows, maybe you’ll make a friend along the way – be it a fellow runner or a dog who chooses to follow you.

Notes: You may find that you are going slower than normal when you first arrive. Remember that Mendoza’s altitude is probably higher than you are used to! It takes some time to adjust but keep at it and you’ll be running like the zonda wine in no time. (Running during the zonda wind is strongly discouraged.)

July 9, 2015 0 comment

Features By Region Argentina Features Foodie

Argentine Asado: The ancient fire show

by Squeeze Experiences July 7, 2015

written by Squeeze Experiences

What is an asado? Well, let me tell you what it is not. It is not just grilling or BBQ-ing. It is not a quick get-together just to eat something. An Asado is a way of life. It is why people work their tails off during the week to reward themselves with the sweet aroma of meat and fire. It is how we celebrate a birthday or a graduation. It is in short, a way of life in Argentina.

You really don’t need a life changing event or even a celebratory reason to start the fire. You simply need to know that when you agree to an asado, you are in for the long haul. The idea is to spend quality time with friends and family, and by quality we mean at least 5 hours.

In order to understand this all-important fire ritual, I’m going to break it down in the five main steps:

I’m the fire starter

It all starts very simply, man making a fire. Now in Argentina’s wine country, Mendoza, we use wood (leña) for our asados. No fancy charcoal briquettes or flavoured wood chunks. We simply use leña. Algarrobos or Quebracho to be exact. I am sure a chair or table maybe thrown in the fire in an emergency, but for the most parts those are the two kinds we use.

Algarrobos is from the genus Prosopis, meaning it hails from the same tree family as the Mesquite that is so popular for grilling and smoking in the US. Quebracho is actually a native word for “breaking ax” and refers to wood derived from a variety of trees native to the Chaco region of South America. The idea is that you need a very hard and dense wood to make a fire to cook your asado.

Every asador (person cooking the asado) has his own technique for building a fire. Some use the tepee method, others the log cabin or a combination of the two. The idea is to get a roaring fire with enough leña to eventually be able to cook with the coals or embers that will result from the burning of the wood.

Fire Starting 101:

Start with base of crumpled up newspaper and pile some kindling on top
For kindling, we use fruit and vegetable crates that your local veggie vendor is more than happy to give to you
Next, place some thinker pieces of wood around an inch in diameter and start your fire
Once the fire has a nice roar to it, pile on some thicker pieces of wood on top. Always being mindful to not smoother the fire or it will die.
It is better to add more wood than you think is necessary. There is no greater mistake than to run out of embers during the cooking process.

The grill and how to clean it:

For the most part, the grills are nothing more than what is known as Rebar or Reinforced Steel Bars. Sure you can get a pre-made grill from a hardware store or supermarket, but to be a true asado, you really need to have the local blacksmith or welder, make you a grill to your specifications.

Most Parrilla’s are custom made. They are simple structures of brick and mortar. Some maybe fancy with chimney’s, other may be a simple concrete table or if you are asado’ing on the go, a simple piece of asphalt will do.

Let’s digress for a minute. If you and some buddies want to make an asado and no one wants to go home, simply find a sidewalk, park area or safe side of the road and start the madness. Keep in mind that someone in your group of friends has a small grill in his car!

The simplest way of cleaning a grill is with a wad of newspaper. No fancy steel brushes or new-fangled mechanical whirly thingy you purchased from an infomercial.

First you need to place your grill directly on top of a roaring fire
Let it sit there for a good 15 minutes or more
Next, use some folded up newspaper remove the grill from the fire and place on ground
Using the same newspaper, start to “rub” the grill with the newspaper. Keep rubbing until you deem it clean.
Return the grill to the fire, in order to heat up whatever part of the grill that did not get clean.
Repeat until all is good.

Working the embers or coals:

Once your grill is clean, you need to start to move any large pieces of wood that has not burnt down into large pieces of coals to a corner.

These large pieces of burning wood will eventually burn down and be the fuel for continued cooking.

The large pieces of coals that remain need to be tampered down, until they are about one inch in diameter. This is what you will use to cook.

Once you have the coals tampered down to size and you move all reaming burning wood to a corner, you place the grill back in place and you are ready to start cooking. Note: You need to add some more wood to the corner pile of burning leña. There is no greater sin than to run out of coals and the asado comes to a screeching halt!

What to cook and when

The most traditional asado is the one where the food comes out at different stages of cooking. For example, Traditionally, the Chorizo and Morcilla come out first – kind of your appetizer for the day.

Most of the time the Asador will cut the Chorizo and Morcilla into bite size pieces and it would be served on a piece of bread, a la crostini.

Now, what order the rest of the food comes out is up to the asador or the host. It is safe to say that no one complains the order that it comes out, as long as it is good!

The idea of the asado is to celebrate life, like the cave men did way back then, fire and meat…and of course a beverage or two.

By Chef Angelo Gonzalez

Having moved to Mendoza a few years ago after leaving his beloved New York, Angelo Gonzalez has been mastering the art of a good asado since. Trained in Caribbean cooking, Angelo likes to pull together the best of Argentine flavours with a Latin American twist in his own closed door restaurant in Mendoza – Al Pasillo.

Do you want to become a master of the Argentine asado? Try out our cooking experience with Chef Angelo Gonzalez.

July 7, 2015 0 comment

Argentina Wine Guide Mendoza Features By Region Argentina Features Wine Travel & Culture

Winery architecture and design along Mendoza’s wine route

by Amanda Barnes June 25, 2015

written by Amanda Barnes

The expression ‘garage winemaker’ comes from just that – making wine in a garage. A grape’s humble abode doesn’t need to be much more than a warehouse. However that doesn’t stop vintners and companies building the most elaborate mansions to house their prized wine. Mendoza is no exception, and along its wine route you will find some outstanding architectural gems to discover, which in many ways, can only be described as temples to wine.

With over 500 years of winemaking history, the ‘winery’ is not a new concept in Mendoza and at one point in history it was actually home to the largest winery in the world – the now abandoned Giol, which pumped out 300,000 hectare litres of wine annually in its prime over 100 years ago. However, the historical wineries were usually between two extremes – very very large, or very very small. Today you can still visit large historical wineries like Trapiche, Bodega Las Toneles, and Rutini, and you can also visit smaller historical wineries like Familia di Tomasso, Carinae, and Clos de Chacras.

For any seasoned Mendoza oenophile, you’ll notice that each of the historical wineries mentioned above, or in my post Top Historical Wineries in Mendoza are based in Maipu and Chacras de Coria. The new frontier for Mendoza’s winery architecture – moving beyond the traditional adobe mud walls and high cane roofs – is in the Uco Valley.

Over an hour from Mendoza city, in a beautiful green oasis framed by the imposing Andes mountains, the Uco Valley is an architect’s dream. Filled with plush foreign investment and showpiece wineries, there is no expense spared and style aplenty.

The first landmark winery of the valley, was Salentein. Finished at the turn of the century, Salentein is the first masterpiece by the renowned Mendoza architects Bormida & Yanzon. Designed as an axis like the Southern Cross, there are five parts to Salentein: the workhorse winery, the show pony winery, the minimalist and modern chapel, the cosy posada, and Killka in the centre. Meaning “gate” in the native Quechua language, Killka is a curious building that appears as a beam supported by two wide pillars to give the impression of a portal.

The glass walls draw your eyes to the surrounding landscape and a small path leads you through the vineyard in the middle of the desert that heralds the winery and marks Mendoza’s transformation into a wine region. This glass centrepiece to Salentien combines a restaurant, wine bar, art gallery, and a sculpture garden with stunning panoramic views that almost, just almost, distract you from the wine you are drinking inside. The combination of glass, stone, cement and open air play with space and light and make you feel as if you have stepped into a sculpture itself. But this is just the beginning…

Dubbed the ‘wine cathedral’, Salentein’s winery is a beautiful earth-coloured brick construction with a slanted green-hued roof – echoing the jagged mountain setting – and surrounded by native desert vegetation. As the tour guide leads you through, you peer down to the cellar in the centre, which is beautifully atmospheric with a large compass that resembles the Greek cross and is symbolic of the Jesuits who lived on the land centuries ago. A piano in the middle might be a surprise but when you ask out loud why there’s a set of ivories in the cellar, you’ll answer your own question as you hear the stunning acoustics that make it one of Mendoza’s best spots for concerts.

Continue through the beautiful winery chambers and you’ll finish in the barely lit tasting room with long marble tables, where you could be forgiven for thinking you were about to take communion. Instead you will take Malbec, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc.

Another of the same architects, Bormida & Yanzón, star wineries is DiamAndes. On the outside, the stones and gravel taken from the excavation site create an attractive pink tint, but inside, in the cellar room, the cylindrical concrete pillars and a concrete floor painted in blue epoxy are lit by a central shaft of light, which infiltrates through the icon of the winery – an abstraction from a diamond sculpture created by twisted stainless-steel bars. A modern architecture jewel indeed.

My favourite one to visit though is O Fournier. Its otherworldly shape is both deeply functional yet avant-garde. This multi-tiered winery uses one of nature’s greatest assets – gravity – to pull the wine through its process, avoiding any pumps or wasted energy. The wine moves through a gravity flow system from the top level where the grapes roll in up the Star Trek-style slopes, down to the second level for fermentation and finally down to the atmospheric cellar-cum-art-gallery for ageing. The most notable architectural feature is the giant black flat umbrella formation on top, which provides shade and temperature control but also creates a statement: the flamboyant structure appears from a distance like a swooping bird, evocative of Mendoza’s emblematic condor.

This is quite a view to behold as you drive up, or even better if you arrive by horseback with their outdoor activities, or sat from the glass cube restaurant that serves up Mendoza’s closest thing to molecular gastronomy paired with fabulous wines and even more fabulous views of the Andes. O Fournier is a fascinating winery that is architecturally sexy, in a geeky Star Trek kind of way.

The impressive nest of new wineries in the Winemaker’s Village is also becoming notable for their unique architecture. Take SuperUco as an example. Designed by the three winemaking Michelini brothers and formalised by architects Maximiliano Mateu and Lucia Carrazco, this boutique winery appears as a nest or rising crown among the vines. The circular winery has perfect viewpoints over the biodynamic vineyards from every standing point and the use of glass walls gives minimum separation from the vineyards – reflecting the minimal intervention philosophy in their winemaking.

Nearby the Vines of Mendoza and Casa de Uco resorts offer the ultimate in vineyard luxury, with private chalets and plunge pools that maximise the stunning Uco Valley background and give you a tip top place to rest your head and get ready for another day of hopping between Mendoza’s stunning wineries.

June 25, 2015 0 comment

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