Newsletter
March, 2006 - South American wine tour
Thirty-two hairpin bends in just a couple of kilometres of ever-twisting road... and no safety barriers on any of them! If we’d missed a turn we’d have tumbled hundreds and hundreds of metres. It was awesome, humbling and yes, more than a little frightening. Especially when the bus swung out wide on bends to avoid heavy trucks toiling upwards.
This descent from border post on the Paso del los Conquistadores was undoubtedly the highlight of the day we crossed the Andes from Argentina to Chile on our 17-day wine tour to South America, probably the best of all the tours Wine Express has done in the past year or so.
The day had started quietly enough with a leisurely breakfast on the terrace of our hotel overlooking a tree-covered square in the centre of Mendoza, Argentina’s fourth largest city and the hub of the country’s main wine-producing region.
On the terrace of our hotel in Mendoza
Mendoza wouldn’t exist without the Andes. Towering up behind the city with snow still on the peaks in mid-summer, they provide the water that nourishes vines and fruits on an otherwise arid plain and enable a million and a half people to live amidst parks and tree-lined avenues in the city itself.
Travelling in two small buses we were soon in the foothills of the Andes where tussocks of wiry grass and the occasional stunted tree slowly gave way to fissured and worn bare rock skirted by screeds of fallen stone. A swollen brown river coursed angrily beneath us while a disused railway line followed us higher and higher into thinner and thinner air.
Near the summit of the pass on the Argentinian side came a fleeting glimpse of Mount Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Andes. Then a long tunnel and a collection of scruffy run-down buildings that house customs and immigration of both countries. Stamps rained down on our passports. Bags disappeared into x-ray machines. And then we were through and back in the bus.
The road dropped down gently enough at first, peaks of mountains and solid walls of rocks pressing in on us. Then, suddenly, we turned into the first hairpin and there below was the road, twisting and turning as if it was climbing the sheer wall of a huge quarry or open-cast mine.
After two or three turns more than one of our party decided to make the descent lying on the floor of the bus or with their heads pressed into their arms. There was a brittle, nervous edge to the banter as cameras were aimed into the void below.
Santiago, Chile
Eventually we reached the floor of a high altitude valley and soon were following another raging brown river down into Chile, ending up in the early evening in a hotel in Santiago with a lovely garden, pool and, yes, splendid views of the mountains we’d just passed through. Thanks to the swallow-dive of a descent it was a day that none of us are likely to forget.
Of course there were many other memorable moments since we always try to make our tours as interesting and varied as possible. A wine tour with Wine Express is not just about a roll call of famous vineyards and flights of wines tasted. It’s about connecting the wine with the country and the people – and above all about having a good time.
And that I think we did.
The fun started in Madrid where we stopped over for a couple of days to visit museums and art galleries and to be entertained by the mounting tempo of flamenco, the music and the musicians as passionate as the dancers themselves.
Argentinian Tango dancers
In Buenos Aires, our first stop in South America, there was more passion in the at times achingly sad and others flippantly flirty music of the tango, Argentina’s very own dance and one through which the soul of a grand but at times tragic country can perhaps be glimpsed.
Argentina’s most recent tragedy, the financial collapse of 2001, is clearly visible in the tired looking buildings in middle-class areas and the paperwork of its currency controls. But its grandeur lives on in the breadth of its boulevards and the scale and magnificence of public buildings erected when the country was the 6th richest in the world.
If there was a single place that I felt epitomised the tragedy of Argentina it was a pizza place on Corrientes street in the heart of Buenos Aires. I went there twice while others were tucking into slabs of Argentinian beef because I couldn’t resist the grandeur of the name: El Palacio de la Pizza.
The pizzas were excellent (Alexander, aged 10, and a connoisseur of crust size, texture and toppings par excellence will vouch for that) and they had a very good choice of wines, many by the half bottle which is about as much as a father should drink while dining alone with his son.
In the streets of Buenos Aires
But there was an overwhelming sense of sadness in the place. You could see it in the cavernous, once grand and full but now slightly raffish and very empty dining area. You could see it in the faces of the waiters. In fact one had such a sad, broken hearted face that I grossly overtipped him, hoping that he’d perhaps break into a smile and I could bask a little in the sunshine of my generosity. But he didn’t. He just nodded his head and turned his back on me. The IMF knows how I felt.
The Peronism (big government, big spending socialism) that lurks behind Argentina’s rapid demotion from the top ranks of the world’s wealthy nations to its present third-world status, lives on in Argentina. I’d like to think that the sadness on the waiter’s face comes from him knowing that it has failed him and the restaurant in which he works.
El Palacio de la Pizza. I thought of it more as a palace of broken promises and broken dreams.
Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay
Across the River Plata in the Uruguayan town of Colonia del Sacramento the glory faded a lot earlier than in Argentina. More than a couple of centuries ago in fact when the Portuguese ceded it to Spain and it immediately became politically irrelevant and a very poor cousin to both Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
But old and faded glory has layers of history on its side and tired buildings, stray dogs and slightly smelly drains all seem part and parcel of being a UNESCO world heritage site. We had a pleasant lunch there and wandered around before returning to the ferry that plies between Colonia and Buenos Aires, keeping a bevy of bureaucrats busy stamping forms and collecting exit taxes.
For many in the group Mendoza was the place they liked most on the trip. In a way I did too. It has a lot of character for an essentially flat town.
Perhaps it’s the sheer quantity of parks, refuges in the event of a big earthquake that forced people out of buildings according to Martin Mantegini, our helpful and informative guide in Mendoza. The last really big one was nearly 30 years ago and there still aren’t many buildings more than six or seven floors high, unusual for a city of a million and a half.
Perhaps its all the trees, not just in the parks but lining the streets as well and in lush private gardens as well. They are watered by small irrigation canals which distribute water around the city and without which Mendoza would shrivel and die since it receives only about 3 cm of rain a year.
Irrigation is essential in the vineyards as well and enables producers to control the amount of water each vine gets, something European producers can never do.
Our group at Salentein winery in Argentina
We visited several vineyards including the new Salentein winery in the Uco valley. Huge amounts of money have been poured into the vineyards and winery. The state of the art winery is in fact a 21st century bacchanalian temple. The cellars, barrel rooms and production areas are all arranged around a soaring open space. From the cellars it’s like gazing upwards in a cathedral.
But our two favourite wineries were on a much smaller scale. The first was Ruca Malen where apart from the very elegant wines served before and during the meal, the food was simply brilliant. Lucas Bustos, a young Argentinian chef just back from the United States, served us beef tenderloin cooked outside on a wood fire and served with roasted onions and chard. It was the tenderest piece of meat I have ever eaten and the tea sauce, thickened with cream, was fantastic.
Lucas was our chef the following day when he prepared lunch for us at Altus, a new winery in the Tupungato, a high-altitude valley 90 km from Mendoza. To start he prepared a delicious selection of tapas, starting with the best empanadas (a sort of meat pie) I had on the tour and followed by glasses of gazpacho, tiny bowls of lentils with onions and bell peppers and a lovely goat liver pate on thin slivers of apple.
Degustation at Altus winery
We enjoyed these tapas in the shade on the veranda a few feet from the nearest vines while Karen Noval talked about the wines produced at Altus and made sure our glasses were never empty. There was more wine at lunch and a main course of young goat which was which was again tender and well presented. And if Lucas was a dream chef then Karen was the perfect hostess.
It was as perfect a lunch as I can imagine.
In general the food and the service in Argentina was first class and sometimes truly exceptional. So to say that these two lunches were the gastronomic highlights of the whole trip is the best compliment I can give Lucas.
Lunch at Altus
Service was generally less professional, polished or enthusiastic in Chile and at times almost non-existent in our hotel, the Hyatt. The rooms, from where you could watch the sun rise above the Andes in the morning, were big, very well designed and equipped with everything you could ask for. The garden and pool were wonderful for a big city hotel. But the service, especially at breakfast time, was amongst the worst I have experienced in a five-star hotel anywhere.
But we were warmly received at Santa Rita, one of the biggest Chilean wineries, and it was a privilege to be able to visit the church and stroll the grounds with their lovely trees, ponds and waterways before sitting down to lunch. The tasting too was very professional and interesting and Santa Rita produces some truly excellent wines.
At TerraMater winery
We were also very warmly received at TerraMater, a medium-size winery with which Wine Express has worked for several years. After the tasting we were taken by tractor to see the vineyards and then on to a stand of eucalyptus trees at the far end of the estate for an evening barbeque.
With us, as she had been during the tasting, was Gilda Canepa, one of three septenarian sisters who inherited TerraMater from their father, an Italian immigrant who made good through dint of hard work, vision and risk. Together with Jose Zabala, the general manager, and Cristian Isbej, European manager, she fielded our questions not only about wine but about Chile in general.
Senora Canepa also received us a few days later at TerraMater’s olive farm in the Colchagua valley, about 140 km south of Santiago, and after a tour of the plant and olive groves hosted us at a lunch in the old colonial homestead on the estate. After the biggest empanadas I have eaten, we were served the very Chilean dish of chicken cooked with polenta made from the corn that grows everywhere in the valley.
When we were leaving we were all presented with bottles of the estate’s avocado oil which we’d tasted earlier on during a fascinating presentation where we’d learned a little about the art of tasting olive oils – what to look for in terms of colour and taste and how to distinguish the good from the bad.
Olive groves at TerraMater
The visit to TerraMater reminded me of what Wine Express is all about. We are not the biggest wine company in Poland and we don’t even have the widest selection of wines. But I think we are the company that is closest to the people who grow the grapes and make the wines that we sell in Poland.
In the past year alone we have personally visited more than a dozen wineries in New Zealand, Italy, France, Argentina and Chile, and in doing so got to know a lot about both the wines and the people who make them. We have also introduced scores of our clients to these winemakers and producers.
Zapallar, Chile
What’s more this tour, like all the others, was not just about wine. In Chile, for example, we drove down to the fishing village and now fashionable resort of Zapallar. We watched them cleaning the days catch and then started lunch in the Chiriguito restaurant with a pisco sour (wow it packs a punch) followed by razor clams and half a dozen other shellfish and grilled sea bass.
Those of us who hadn’t over-indulged on the pisco sour and wine (and some who had) then went swimming in the Pacific Ocean. Since the cold Humboldt current sweeps up the Chilean coast the water temperature in mid-summer is somewhere between 10 and 14 degrees. But the crashing waves were too much to resist and even those who wouldn’t think of swimming in the Baltic at the same temperature were soon in.
A leisurely drive down the coast and a visit to the port city of Valparaiso and then back to Santiago on one of the fine highways that Chile has built in the last decade. Another perfect day.
Lunch in Zapallar, Chile
The group in Salentein's cathedral-like cellar
You can read about our previous wine tours:
- March, 2005 – New Zealand
- May, 2005 – Bordeaux, France
- October, 2005 – Tuscany, Italy
- April, 2006 – Barcelona and Priorat
- October, 2006 – Portugal
- February, 2007 – Southern Africa
- April, 2007 – Bilbao and Rioja
- October, 2008 – Alsace, France
- October, 2009 – Duoro, Portugal
or you can check our upcoming wine tours.
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