Wine, Wine, Wine! Santiago & Mendoza

Written by Bessie about Argentina. Feelin' normal
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Central Chile & Argentina are huge wine producing areas, with micro-climates similar to those in Napa Valley and parts of France and Italy.  Traveling by bus through these areas, short green trees spread over the rolling hills, and delicious grapes hang, warmed by the sun.  It's a beautiful sight really, and the yummyness of wine aside, the areas are worth a visit.
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We spent the better part of 3 days exploring some vineyards, swooshing wine around in glasses and learning a thing or two about wine making, sadly, none of which involved squishing grapes with my toes.  Maybe I'll start that tour.


Day 1: Concha y Toro vineyard near Santiago, Chile
Concha y Toro is a huge wine producer, their wines available in some 135 countries.  Like many of the wineries we visited, it's old, opened in 1883, and rich in history.  The founder lived in a huge old English-style mansion, and is still known as a great international business man.
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Being the smarty pants Don Malchor was, when he started having bottles of wine disappearing from his wine cellar, he knew just the remedy.  Blame the devil.  He told the supersticious locals that the devil lived in the deep, dark cellar where the wine was kept, and pulled Halloween style pranks shaking bottles and making loud screamy noises.  It worked, and the wine became known as Casillero del Diablo, and is a famous wine world-wide today.
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Day 2: Biking the Wine Road near Mendoza
Combining biking with drinking wine isn't the most natural of fusions, but we didnt actually drink while on the bikes, and it's a lot of fun. 
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Picture the sun shining while you're riding through green vineyards.  We started in small town of Maipú (Kyle likes to say my pooh, not your pooh).
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Carinae boutique winery bottles only 60,000 bottles/year.
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The 150 year old winery Familia Di Tomasso is Italian & run by family members.  It's all about old bricks and barrels here.

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The modern Tempus Alba winery - sold as Preludio in the US.
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Oh, and just to be a little more indulgant, we stopped at a chocolate factory, too, Historias y Sabores.

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Day 3: Continuing the Biking Obsession
We had so much fun the first time around biking, we decided to it again, this time in Luján, within the Mendoza city limits.

Cavas Weinert - uses the largest oak barrels ever and can hold up to 470 liters.
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(Kyle using the classy wine-tasting skills he aquired.)

Familia Vargas winery was my kind of place for photos.

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And to finish off our three days of winery exploration, we had the largest meal I've ever seen.  44 plates of food to bring out the different flavors in the wine and mess around with your taste buds.  Oh yeah, and we were supposed to have 4 more courses after that, but we passed, and just stuck with the absurd buffet.
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Cavas de Canas could probably scale back the lunch size a little.

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