Wine tasting thru Argentina's Mendoza wine region

It's been a sensational year of global wine tasting for yours truly. Studying in France last spring provided me with the chance for a weekend of sancerres and vouvrays in the Loire Valley and a freezing day in Reims amongst the bubbly champagnes of Mumm and Moet et Chandon. My spring break trip to Central Europe allowed me to visit the Hungarian Wine Museum in Budapest, a magnificent stop for sampling the wines of one of the world's emerging viticulture areas. A quick stop in June in Porto, Portugal enabled for visits to some of the great port wine houses. Despite having grown up in the Bay Area, I finally visited the Napa wine region for the first time during the summer.

And this past March as part of my 11 day trip to Chile and Argentina,  I had the opportunity to experience one of the world's most impressive and very young still wine regions, the Mendoza of Argentina. An hour flight west of Buenos Aires at the eastern foot of the Andes, Mendoza is a rugged, dry region, perfect for the full bodied red grapes it produces, making some of the world's most coveted red wines of all price ranges. It almost seems like fate that Argentina happens to produce some of the world's finest cattle for beef and red wine grapes. A bottle of malbec and a slab of ojo de bife with chimichurri...it doesn't get much better.

Argentina's more temperate northern region of Salta produces the country's majority of whites, including the torrontes varietal which is starting to gain more respect as a dryer white wine rival to sauvignon blanc. Yet the heart and soul of Argentina's wine culture is the over 370,000 acres of Uco Valley, Lujan and Maipu regions in the Mendoza province, creating more than 70% of Argentina's wines. Within those areas of the province are several other appellations that put Mendoza on par with many of the world's top wine producers for quality and quantity of its product. Argentina is now the world's 6th largest producer of wine.

Mendoza has had vineyards since the Spanish arrived back in the 1500's to Argentina, but its wines were not even thought of on a global scale  until Nicolás Catena set out to bring the winemaking techniques of well known vineyards in France and Napa (including Napa's famed winemaker Paul Hobbs who now has a vineyard in Mendoza, Viña Cobos) to Mendoza and blended them with the perfect terroir for vineyard growing, creating a world class winemaking region. Much of Argentina is too hot year round for wine growing, so the vineyards had to be built in cooler areas such as the Mendoza at a high elevation near the Andes. It took until 2002 for the Argentine peso to devalue enough for international exports of wines to be profitable and since then exports have shot through the roof the past decade, while Argentina still also enjoys a great number of its wines still at home. Foreign giants such as Moet et Chandon have stamped their place in Argentina much like they did in Napa when it emerged in the 1960's, yet Argentina's wine industry still is very much a homegrown, local enterprise, as much a piece of life local life in the country as soccer and parillas.

Malbec grapes are the specialty of Mendoza without a doubt, a spectacular product of the dry, high elevation that perfectly compliments beef at a parilla. What I find most wonderful about malbec is that it has the complexity and richness of a cabernet sauvignon to masterfully match with red meat, but is not so overpowering to be excessive when sampled alone without food. Many malbecs can be refreshing even in a way during those hot days in Mendoza.

Each winery I visited featured a very strong malbec, in particular a stand out 2008 vintage from Achaval Ferrer's "Finca Bella Vista" vineyard. Achaval Ferrer is a truly spectacular bodega, in part for its beautiful grounds perfect for a picnic with a panoramic view of the Andes on a clear day, and for the quality of its wines. A few of their vintages in fact are available right here in Claremont at Packinghouse Wine Merchants (not cheap but still worth it!). Our visit happened to coincide with production day at the winery, an exciting experience to see the grapes going through the press and to see in the tank room red stained walls from a pipe malfunction. There's nothing like walking through wine. The only knock is that tastings are guided, a system I'm not a huge fan of where mostly experience wine tasters are told what to taste and how to taste the glasses. The tour itself though is one of Mendoza's best.

Trapiche is certainly one of the largest Mendoza winemakers with a very elaborate vineyard complete with its train transportation system. Yet it still produce some stand out wines of all price ranges and the tours manage to still be very small and personal. The highlight is the glass floor of the tasting room where you sit above the barrel room storing the wines that will eventually be sampled upstairs. Trapiche is available all throughout the U.S. including at Upland's very own Tango Baires (see last week's print edition review for more on there).

At the opposite end of the spectrum from Trapiche are the tiny boutique wineries Carmello Patti and Carinae. Patti is one of two employees at this vineyard with two buildings: where the wine is made and where the wine is stored. Robert Mondavi or Moet et Chandon this is not. No tourbus would fit in the sliver of a parking lot here.  Patti's red only wines are all very rich, with his oldest vintage of malbec being of legendary status. All visits are hosted by Patti, though an interpreter would be very helpful (luckily we had one) as he does not speak English. You can speak French if you want over at Carinae, owned by Philippe and Brigitte Subra from France. Carinae's malbec is again top notch, but as is the Prestige blend red and even an extremely nuanced, crisp torrontes. The winery has a fascinating bodega with stunning stained glass windows in the design of various astrology signs, a recurring theme at the winery including the name.

The most stunning vineyard to visit, a must do on everybody's list is Catena Zapata, owned by the aformentioned Catena family. Nicolás Catena's daughter Laura now runs the show, one of Argentina's most influential wine figures, a graduate of Harvard and Stanford, and the author of a mandatory book on Argentina's wine industry, culture, and history Vino Argentino, many thanks to the L.A. Times' S. Irene Virbila for so graciously sending me this fascinating book. The wine tasting at Catena Zapata almost seems secondary to the bodega's mesmerizing design, a Mayan pyramid with a captivating staircase rising through center of the structure to the summit where breathtaking views of the vineyards and beyond await. Oh, yeah, the wine is some of Mendoza's premier level wines too. The entire building, not just the exterior architecture is just captivating. The tour however was the briefest and least informative of all our visits, very much just a tour through the script. A video of a vineyard's history is also not such a good idea...wine tasting and dark rooms with 10 minute long videos are a recipe for a siesta any time of day.

We were scheduled to visit Tempus Alba too but overstayed our time at one vineyard, but I've heard fantastic things about there. The same with Ruca Malen (where you can get an elaborate 5 course lunch to expedite the siesta process), along with a host of other wineries of all shapes and sizes. Like with Napa and any other major wine region, the hardest part of a visit is choosing which wineries to taste at.

Mendoza the city is still trying to match up to the levels of wine the region produces. Downtown now has a top notch hotel (Park Hyatt) which also boasts a fantastic tasting room run by the Vines of Mendoza, an enterprise created to help tourists figure out how best to tour and taste the region's wines. Mendoza is not exactly the Napa Valley when it comes to dining, Yountville itself with more destination restaurants than all of the Mendoza region. Yet there is some exciting cuisine to be found at the wine shop/tapas bar Azafran and the tiny new bistro Florentino.We enjoyed a dinner at the local's favorite parilla Don Mario, certainly the only Americans there and the amazingly wonderful and comedic waiter knew that and loved that. He noticed my camera and asked to take a before and after picture of the sizzling plate of our beef. Looking at them now, the results are startling, forcing a few miles of running after each glance. The beef was indeed very enjoyable but not top notch tender on a Las Lilas level, the flanksteak cut a tad tough compared to the short ribs and juicy bife de chorizo (NY Steak). A flan with dulce de leche for dessert is stellar.

The standout restaurant comes from Francis Mallmann, the Emeril Lagasse and Mario Batali celebrity chef o Argentina.  Located in Mendoza City's oldest winery Bodegas Escoihuela Gascón, 1884 (named for the winery's founding year) is an elaborate, not too formal room that borders on corporate but manages to stay relaxed. Mallmann's mud oven produces the house specialties and the results were some of the most enjoyable bites of the trip that added up to our best restaurant experience in either Argentina or Chile. The mud oven creates masterpiece empanadas and an impeccable, buttery langoustines that melt when touched by a fork, accompanied by crisp bacon and silky potatoes. If possible, the oven yields an even better wood roasted lamb sirloin, bursting with a subtle game flavor, atop a pea risotto as green as Ireland. The wood roasted goat is simply toched with a few sprigs of thyme, yet immensely juicy and flavorful, even better than the famed version at L.A.'s El Parian. The pièce de résistance is at the end, the "chocolate for chocoholics" that is every bit of what it sounds. There is chocoate mousse, a moist chocolate cake, a robust chocolate ice cream, and a chocolate truffle heart. The components add up to pure bliss of what Charlie must have experienced at Willy Wonka's factory (the dessert makes you feel more like Augustus Gloop afterwards). 1884 is the opposite of Don Mario when it comes to locals and tourists in the room, but hey, we're tourists after all, and 1884 is in no way touristy restaurant quality with its service and top notch cuisine.

I was fascinated by how much of my youthful generation visited the Mendoza regions, most on long South America tours between destinations Buenos Aires and Santiago. You never see in Napa or the Loire Valley college aged kids who are on the South American equivalent of a Eurotrip. They're all here to bike around the flat areas of vineyards. It's a perfect activity for getting around the area, yet of course the more you taste...

Driving in Argentina is pretty much a contact sport, being even more intense over in Buenos Aires. A 2 lane road is really a 4 lane road. Don't you see that middle line? So driving after tasting while navigating the complicated maps of the area is highly unrecommended. There are tours of all shapes and sizes, but it doesn't get any better than our driver, host, guide, and now good friend Gustavo Delucchi. Gustavo's story from running away from his family in Buenos Aires to Mendoza and how has single-handedly learned as much about not just Argentina's wines, the wine-making process, and just the world at large is absolutely inspiring, and would fool anybody into thinking he has a Ph. D from Harvard. Driving in his truck around the wineries where he is truly a best friend of every employee at every winery, horseback riding with him one morning, and enjoying a picnic lunch at Achaval Ferrer and lunch at the place to go for heavy but enjoyable local Mendozan cuisine Casa Campos, are the most enduring and rewarding memories of this incredible trip. I am sure Gustavo's one man company will soon become a much larger enterprise that will be used by nearly everyone in the region but we were lucky to be guided by him, just my family, and a fantastic man, and wine guide. Here's his website, no doubt the perfect guide to make your trip to Mendoza extraordinary.

All of this wine talk makes me want some malbec now...I'm sure it would help my thesis writing.