“Wine Camp” at the Vines of Mendoza Estates was a special experience courtesy of the founders and executives of Vines of Mendoza, a startup wine development company. We believe this company is going to dominate the Mendoza wine scene. It has the premier tasting room in Mendoza proper, a wine bar at the best hotel in Mendoza (the Park Hyatt) and a huge wine estate in Uco Valley, where people can buy up parcels of 3 acres or more and make their own wine. Vines of Mendoza is full-service – they plant your vines, care for them until they’re ready to harvest, harvest them, then make and bottle your wine with a wine consultant (and your consultation of course). So, if you have some dough and love wine, we think this is a way to own your own little vineyard without any of the hard work.
So, as part of the wine camp, we got to harvest grapes by hand with clippers. Trust us, it really makes you appreciate the wine you drink and the price you pay for it because you have to squat down and clip grape bunches from rows and rows of grape vines. Not 5 minutes after we started, we felt the soreness in our backs and the amount of grapes we harvested was probably enough only for a bottle of wine.
(Note: This is one of Lisa’s first attempts at the Bokeh effect)
After harvesting grapes, we rode some horses to the winery facility. Despite Lisa’s smile here, she was deathly afraid of riding after falling off of a horse years ago in South Africa.
Here’s a view of a new vineyard (“Los Guapos”) at the Vines of Mendoza Estate – the owner of the parcel was visiting it for the first time.
Here’s Lisa sorting grapes and removing excess stems. The irony of the experience was that we paid to have this experience … while the workers were getting paid to do it.
Here’s Tony after squishing some of the must (grape mixture). The juice really soaks and stains your skin.
After sampling some juice before and during fermentation, we rode horses over to a traditional asado. Yes, I look quite manly on this horse 😉 but I’ll admit that it was more punishment than enjoyment – basically it was like getting kicked in the balls repeatedly for 2 minutes while holding on for dear life while the horse galloped seemingly out of control. Obviously, I didn’t know how to ride, so I ended up with some nasty blisters from hanging on to the reins and saddle. Nevertheless, it was still fun!
Here’s the asado – some of the best meat we’ve had during our entire time in Argentina to date. We had beef, chicken, the juiciest pork tenderloin, blood sausage, regular sausage, among other meats!
Here’s Uco, the Vines of Mendoza mascot, begging for food from the asado – she’s a pro.
See more photos from the wine camp on the slideshow