Wine tasting room at Pulenta
Marianne wondering how she can send this through checked luggage
Brady and Dick wondering if they can take a swim in Lake Malbec
Lunch of our lives
Monday, January 11, 2010
A Trip Through Wine Country
Wine tasting room at Pulenta Marianne wondering how she can send this through checked luggage Brady and Dick wondering if they can take a swim in Lake Malbec Lunch of our lives
A Trip Through Wine Country
OK, I’ve been remiss in my blog postings. With that said, I’ll try to play catch up.
A few weeks ago, Jose, our intrepid posada owner, set up a wine tour to Uco Valley. It’s about two hours south of here. Uco Valley is an area that has seen rapid investment in new wineries by big money foreigners. The buildings are architectural marvels out in the middle of what appears to be desert. It is beautiful with the 20K+ foot Andes as a backdrop.
Our day started as we piled into Jose and Eugenia’s cars and headed to our first stop at Pulenta Estates. Pulenta is in Ugartichi, on the way to the Valley. We greeted by our hostess, Maria. A little explanation is in order for those of you familiar with wine tasting. In California and New Zealand, you drive into any winery, go to the tasting room, get a few small glasses of their product, and move on to the next winery. Here, you must make an appointment and plan to be there for at least an hour or more. At Pulenta we started our tour with a walk through of their production facilities. It is a relatively new winery and the building appeared more functional than aesthetic. Maria gave us a history of the family ownership and their wine making philosophy. We eventually ended up in the storage cellar. You could see this was the area the architect put together his magic. The three buildings above ground were all connected below ground in a series of passages and connecting rooms. Our tasting took place in the center of the facility in a room with glass walls looking out to their barrel and bottling areas. A sunlight provided lighting. The room had one large table, about 8’ x 8’, and 8 chairs. It was set as if there was to be a meeting of their most influential distributors. It took me about five minutes to figure out it was set up just for us. We took our seats with four large glasses at each seat. Maria gave us three options to choose from, a flight of white, a flight of red, or a mix of each. A flight consist of three or more different wines usually offered in small samples. There was nothing small about the samples Maria poured. Nothing like firing down four large glasses of vino for breakfast. Jose probably has a discriminating palate, but for me, every wine was wonderful. After the fourth glass, I was starting to get nervous that we were overstaying our welcome. That’s just the time Maria sat down and pulled out a bottle of their Reserve. I now wondered if we would spend the entire day there. I’m not complaining as I was on glass numero cinco and each wine kept getting better. But it was only 11:00 AM. I’m sure Maria would have continued to pour us more glasses if we hadn’t told her we had appointments at another vineyard. Pulenta has an arrangement with Porsche Argentina and they make a bottle called the 911, named after one of Porsche’s famous cars. Their wine was great but I would have preferred the car. We paid Maria $10 for our tour and headed south.
Uco Valley was an hour and a half away. Imagine driving through SW Colorado/SE Utah, mostly rocky desert. As we crested over the hills entering the Valley, you could see a line of green, where every imaginable fruit and vegetable grows. The water comes from a river flowing from the peaks of the Andes. The Argentines have had about five hundred years to perfect their irrigation techniques and very little of the water gets wasted. We passed through a small town of Tupungato, which is named after the high volcano next to the area.
On to O. Fournier (www.ofournier.com/web/ar_06_in.html), a new winery built by a Spaniard who knew he could replicate the vineyards he owns in Spain. At first it looked like a flying saucer had landed on a building out in the middle of nowhere. It was some of the most amazing architecture I’ve seen. The place is huge. We were scheduled to take a tour and have lunch here. For you wine snobs, O Fournier has two wines rated at 91 and 93 by Wine Spectator, the industry standard. It was way out my league. As we were running late from our visit at Pulenta, we asked for the Cliffs Notes version of the tour. Even so, it still took a half an hour to get through the facility. When we were brought to the restaurant I was expecting to see a crowd. We were their only customers.
I could spend the next hour talking about the lunch we had. I will just say it was the finest lunch I’ve ever experienced. With the windows looking out on the snow capped Andes, impeccable service, and course after course presented like art work, it was all I could do to eat. Lunch also consisted of our wine tasting, except this time their was no limit on the glasses. Three hours later we stumbled out into the blazing sun.
We hustled along to our next stop at Andeluna. Andeluna is owned by Senor Lay, as in Frito Lay. I figure I’ve probably paid for his building through my purchases of Ruffles. We pulled up to the guard shack and the guard told us we missed our tour by a mere hour and the winery had closed at 5:00PM. Where did the day go?! I’m sure I hadn’t much over a dozen glasses yet.
We jumped back into the car for our two hour ride home. Back up the hill we noticed a bunch of crosses and little statues. I thought they were for all the people killed in car crashes, like we saw in Puerto Rico. It turns out they are for a mythical child lost in the hills. People regularly leave bottles filled with water for the child. Now it looks like a bunch of trash surrounding a makeshift cross. Only in Argentina.
When we got home, we grilled some beef and drank some wine for dinner. Why doesn’t my head hurt more? And why is it getting more difficult to button my pants?
A few weeks ago, Jose, our intrepid posada owner, set up a wine tour to Uco Valley. It’s about two hours south of here. Uco Valley is an area that has seen rapid investment in new wineries by big money foreigners. The buildings are architectural marvels out in the middle of what appears to be desert. It is beautiful with the 20K+ foot Andes as a backdrop.
Our day started as we piled into Jose and Eugenia’s cars and headed to our first stop at Pulenta Estates. Pulenta is in Ugartichi, on the way to the Valley. We greeted by our hostess, Maria. A little explanation is in order for those of you familiar with wine tasting. In California and New Zealand, you drive into any winery, go to the tasting room, get a few small glasses of their product, and move on to the next winery. Here, you must make an appointment and plan to be there for at least an hour or more. At Pulenta we started our tour with a walk through of their production facilities. It is a relatively new winery and the building appeared more functional than aesthetic. Maria gave us a history of the family ownership and their wine making philosophy. We eventually ended up in the storage cellar. You could see this was the area the architect put together his magic. The three buildings above ground were all connected below ground in a series of passages and connecting rooms. Our tasting took place in the center of the facility in a room with glass walls looking out to their barrel and bottling areas. A sunlight provided lighting. The room had one large table, about 8’ x 8’, and 8 chairs. It was set as if there was to be a meeting of their most influential distributors. It took me about five minutes to figure out it was set up just for us. We took our seats with four large glasses at each seat. Maria gave us three options to choose from, a flight of white, a flight of red, or a mix of each. A flight consist of three or more different wines usually offered in small samples. There was nothing small about the samples Maria poured. Nothing like firing down four large glasses of vino for breakfast. Jose probably has a discriminating palate, but for me, every wine was wonderful. After the fourth glass, I was starting to get nervous that we were overstaying our welcome. That’s just the time Maria sat down and pulled out a bottle of their Reserve. I now wondered if we would spend the entire day there. I’m not complaining as I was on glass numero cinco and each wine kept getting better. But it was only 11:00 AM. I’m sure Maria would have continued to pour us more glasses if we hadn’t told her we had appointments at another vineyard. Pulenta has an arrangement with Porsche Argentina and they make a bottle called the 911, named after one of Porsche’s famous cars. Their wine was great but I would have preferred the car. We paid Maria $10 for our tour and headed south.
Uco Valley was an hour and a half away. Imagine driving through SW Colorado/SE Utah, mostly rocky desert. As we crested over the hills entering the Valley, you could see a line of green, where every imaginable fruit and vegetable grows. The water comes from a river flowing from the peaks of the Andes. The Argentines have had about five hundred years to perfect their irrigation techniques and very little of the water gets wasted. We passed through a small town of Tupungato, which is named after the high volcano next to the area.
On to O. Fournier (www.ofournier.com/web/ar_06_in.html), a new winery built by a Spaniard who knew he could replicate the vineyards he owns in Spain. At first it looked like a flying saucer had landed on a building out in the middle of nowhere. It was some of the most amazing architecture I’ve seen. The place is huge. We were scheduled to take a tour and have lunch here. For you wine snobs, O Fournier has two wines rated at 91 and 93 by Wine Spectator, the industry standard. It was way out my league. As we were running late from our visit at Pulenta, we asked for the Cliffs Notes version of the tour. Even so, it still took a half an hour to get through the facility. When we were brought to the restaurant I was expecting to see a crowd. We were their only customers.
I could spend the next hour talking about the lunch we had. I will just say it was the finest lunch I’ve ever experienced. With the windows looking out on the snow capped Andes, impeccable service, and course after course presented like art work, it was all I could do to eat. Lunch also consisted of our wine tasting, except this time their was no limit on the glasses. Three hours later we stumbled out into the blazing sun.
We hustled along to our next stop at Andeluna. Andeluna is owned by Senor Lay, as in Frito Lay. I figure I’ve probably paid for his building through my purchases of Ruffles. We pulled up to the guard shack and the guard told us we missed our tour by a mere hour and the winery had closed at 5:00PM. Where did the day go?! I’m sure I hadn’t much over a dozen glasses yet.
We jumped back into the car for our two hour ride home. Back up the hill we noticed a bunch of crosses and little statues. I thought they were for all the people killed in car crashes, like we saw in Puerto Rico. It turns out they are for a mythical child lost in the hills. People regularly leave bottles filled with water for the child. Now it looks like a bunch of trash surrounding a makeshift cross. Only in Argentina.
When we got home, we grilled some beef and drank some wine for dinner. Why doesn’t my head hurt more? And why is it getting more difficult to button my pants?
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