Mendoza Wine Country & A Tale of 2 Milongas.

Mendoza Province is located on the border of Argentina and Chile, about 600 miles due west of Buenos Aires, on the eastern edge of the Andes. Abram and I left Buenos Aires on Sunday June 11 for the 90-minute flight to the Mendoza Wine Country. The entire province is 400 miles north to south and 200 miles east to west; the most-visited wine producing region is about 80 miles long and about 30 miles wide, stretching south from the capital city of Mendoza. Its altitude ranges from 1,500 to almost 5,000 feet, allowing the growers and winemakers to use altitude as one of the elements making up their choices and blends of grapes. Mendoza is known internationally for Malbec, but also produces many other varietals including, surprisingly, one of my favorite wines - Lambrusco!

The area also features thermal hot springs and we started our mini vacation with two days at the incredible Termas Cacheuta, an hour drive southwest of the city of Mendoza, nestled in a river gorge at the very foot of the eastern slopes of the Andes.

Abram in one of his happy places - hot water!

The Termas Cacheuta are a series of picturesque outdoor pools running along the Rio Mendoza. There's also an indoor area with a few more pools, a pebble-bottom foot massage walking pool, sauna and steam in a stone grotto, and a stone basin containing warm mud to smear over your face and body, then let dry and shower off. We were very lucky with the weather - cold at night, cool and sunny in the daytime. There aren't any restaurants nearby so you take all three meals on the property; lunch was a "parilla" asado buffet extravaganza! Lots of people come from nearby areas, including quite a few who made the 5-hour drive over the Andes from Santiago.

The second morning Abram met a bunch of people in one of the hot pools and introduced them to the pleasures of going back and forth from cold plunge to hot tub. At first they thought he was nuts but after a while they were all blissed out.

They had a picturesque wine cellar!

We'd made a reservation for the following night at a winery - a bodega as we call them in Argentina - with a hotel attached. Most restaurants and hotels that are not in a sizeable town are part of wineries. We saw a handful of little cabañas, and a few road-side food stands but not many. We stayed at Bodega Salentein, a very large property with five different growing areas, all at different altitudes. They also own land and grow at the other end of the valley; they're one of the big guys.

In order to get from the thermal spa, out of the river gorge, over some foothills and down to the main road (the infamous Highway 40) we had to go up up up up and around and through a tunnel. Until that point we'd only had a glimpse of the peaks of the Andes from the airport, but when we came out of the tunnel we saw this!!

And this!

And this gorgeous lake.

Yes, I really was there.

For the next few days these gigantic mountains were a constant presence. So majestic.

On our way down to Bodega Salentein we'd been looking for a place to have lunch. The usual search "restaurants near me" came up with Quimera Bistro just a couple miles away. Anything with bistro in the name sounds like a good bet so we headed towards it. When we arrived, there was a big gate and a gatehouse and a guard; it's a restaurant attached to a winery and the guard wasn't optimistic that they'd be able to seat us without a reservation. He suggested we drive up and ask. Hooray they could seat us, for their 5-course set menu with several options for wine pairings. A bit more than we'd expected but we dug right in! It was a fabulous meal. The sommelier was a young woman from Russia. The chef was a 27-year-old woman originally from Buenos Aires who has traveled and cooked all over the world. She'd been back in Buenos Aires when the owners of this winery offered her complete creative freedom if she'd come be their resident chef. I didn't take any photos of the food, but she showed us one of her pantries - all home-made, home-grown, home-canned items.

Their big oven.

The view when walking up to the restaurant.

After a couple of hours enjoying lunch we staggered - can a car stagger? - the 45 minutes to our abode for the night. Abram is our designated driver - lucky me. Green salad and a few bits of charcuterie did us for dinner.

The following morning we went on a tour and tasting at the Salentein Bodega. It's a perfectly situated property, with outdoor sculptures and also an impressive and interesting collection of art in their gallery, the Killka Collection. Here are a few shots, outdoors and indoors:

In this barrel room they hold events and concerts, with room for up to 200 people. Incredible acoustics.

Down the road a reminder of home:

The main wine-tasting region in Mendoza Province is made up of three areas: Valle de Uco in the south, Luján de Cuyo in the middle, and Maipú up closer to the city of Mendoza. Being the city-lovers that we are, we headed north to Mendoza the following day, with plans to explore the city and do a bit more tasting in nearby bodegas.

There are 200,000 people in Mendoza (2,000,000 in the province). It's very chill compared to Buenos Aires; lots of people there obviously to do wine tasting. Many tourists from Brazil, so most of the signage is in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

In Maipú is Bodega Don Bosco, one of the oldest wineries in Argentina. They also have a viticulture/enology school. Every student makes a wine from beginning to end, choosing and blending the grapes, using all the equipment at the bodega, designing the labels. A sample of every student wine has been kept at the winery. Don Bosco makes several varietals of wine - including a non-sparkling Lambrusco - and olive oil. They have a wine tower, one of only three in the world: read the blurb in the photo below about the use of gravity. The tower was an innovation in the 1950's. The cellar where they store very old bottles and samples of all wines made by students is the oldest cellar in Argentina, from 1880. We had a nice tour by a lovely woman who came out of the administrative office when we showed up without a reservation - we even came in by the wrong entrance and parked in the employee parking lot - but they were super nice anyway! We bought some wine, including the non-sparkling Lambrusco (apparently that's Argentine style), and some olive oil. We tasted some sweet wine that's used as sacramental wine in all the Catholic churches in Argentina; Bodega Don Bosco has that exclusive contract. The tour guide also told us that Argentine airlines let you carry on three bottles of wine per person in the cabin of the plane when you fly domestically - how civilized!

The wine tower.

The inside of the wine tower.

Blurb about the wine tower, designed by Emilio Sernagiotto.

The historic wine bottles; this is about 10% of the bottles they have stored.

Back in the city. Mendoza has gigantic gutters! They must have a lot of rain and/or runoff from the mountains. Also an interesting method for having their garbage and recycling picked up: large baskets/bins high off the ground. I haven't seen anyone picking up the bags yet. They have some interesting buildings and it's clearly all about wine here!

Abram went to the Mercado Central and I went to the historical museum.

Wrapping up our Mendoza getaway with a sunset view of the Andes foothills from our downtown hotel.

And a Bulleit Bourbon in the hotel bar because in the immortal words of Bernie Taupin, sung by Elton John, "It's like tryin' to drink whiskey from a bottle of wine".

In the meantime, back in Buenos Aires, we realized we'd been in town for almost two months and hadn't seen any tango, except for a couple of street sightings at the San Telmo Market and in La Boca. We wanted to go to a Milonga and watch the dancing scene! The word Milonga means both a dance, a ballroom dance from the Gauchos that preceded the tango, and also the location and/or event where groups of people dance the tango. We wanted something neighborhood, not a fancy show, and got recommendations from two expats, a Scottish woman who came to Buenos Aires by way of Canada, and a Swedish woman who married an Argentinian man and owns a hair salon here. The first Milonga was old-school dress-up style and the second one was much more casual. The first one was in a big community hall and had a DJ. He played disco tunes after every three tango tunes, allowing the dancers to take a break, get a drink, change partners, sit and fan themselves (everyone had a fan). Abram and I were tempted to hit the floor to Gloria Gaynor because we sure as heck can't tango... but we couldn't quite bring ourselves to. The second Milonga was in a very old Bar Notable in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, one of those places where the owner asks rather incredulously, "how did YOU end up here?!" when he hears our American accents. "My haircutter recommended this place; she lives nearby". " ¡Ah, bien, bienvenidos, este es el verdadero tango aquí!" Extra great at this venue was live music and an open mic night, with neighborhood folks singing two tango songs each. What a treat!

Some shots and videos from the two Milongas:

Compare...

And contrast.

As cool as it was to enjoy the fancy scene with the fancy clothes, my taste leans more to the neighborhood bar. At the first Milonga, the women had to sit around and wait for men to ask them to dance arrrggh horrible memories of awful junior high school dances. Plus those heels! Give me a dive bar Milonga, please.