Mendoza is the wine country of Argentina. It is a nice town of trees and parks - and lots of vineyards.
This is the entrance to San Martin Park a huge park on the east side of the town. Argentinians like their parks for sure.
This statue is on the back of the $5 Argentine peso. It is on the top of a hill in the park and is supposed to show Argentina being liberated.
A tree lined street - even though this area gets little rain they have an extensive canal system (also used by the vineyards) that brings water into the city and it flows right along the streets.
Our first winery tour - the Weinert vineyard - Germans who moved to Brazil and then decided Argentina was a good place to start making some wine.
Downstairs at the Weinert Vineyard (where they keep the good stuff) - we learned the temperature and humidity, as well as the type of wood, all impact the flavor of the wine. Argentina is best know for its Malbec variety of wine and we definitely sampled a few bottles while in Mendoza.
The monster cask - this thing held hundreds of hecto litres of wine - how they measure it in metric units.
This video shows how they bottle the wine at the first winery. The first stage rinses the bottles then blows air in to dry them out, it then moves on to the filling stage, then the liquid leveling stage, and finally the corking. The wine in this video is their Rosé not the Malbec.
We learned so much that day! :)
This is what the lighting is really like downstairs, it's pretty dark - Joe played with the shutter speed of the camera in the other pictures to make them look brighter. All the casks had the year, the type of wine, and how long it needed to age written on the front.
This was at a second smaller winery (less sophisticated machinery) and this is where the grapes go in to be squashed (not by feet anymore - thank goodness).
These are the more current types of casks (second winery) - French Oak (the type of wood is VERY important and also VERY expensive).
Our tour also included a olive oil plant (EVOO for all you chefs). That thing is where the olives go in to get mashed by the big stone.
Then the olives get stacked up on sheets and squashed some more until all that comes out is nice clean oil.
This video shows how they bottle the wine at the first winery. The first stage rinses the bottles then blows air in to dry them out, it then moves on to the filling stage, then the liquid leveling stage, and finally the corking. The wine in this video is their Rosé not the Malbec.
We learned so much that day! :)
