Mendoza Part 2: Lujan de Cuyo Wine Tour

The second half of our stay in Mendoza consisted of exploring the town itself and going on a full day wine-tasting tour of the Lujan de Cuyo wine region, the oldest wine region in the area. We decided to do a tour in order to get more information on the wine making process and the wines we were tasting, and it was definitely worth it as we learned that day.

We were picked up at 8:50am and after picking up the other guests on the tour (we were 8 in total), we proceeded to our first vineyard, Mendel. We were met by the quirky and chatty guide that took us through the full production process. It is a comparatively small vineyard that specialises in Malbecs and after the tour we sat down to taste 4 of their wines.

We then headed to the next vineyard called Dante Robino, a much larger vineyard that is unique for the region as it also produces sparkling wines. We learned all about the two methods of how to make sparkling wine, as well as how this vineyard produces its white and red wines. The tour was promptly followed by another tasting of 5 wines. In my opinion, these were even better than the first ones.

So two tours and 9 wines down and it's now about 12:30pm and time to head to our third vineyard, Club Tapiz, where we are going to have lunch.

Lunch was a delicious four course meal, which included ceviche, brochette, an amazingly large steak and dessert. Of course, each course was paired with wine from the vineyard, so when we leave about 2 hours later, we are down 13 types of wine.

At this point, we couldn't believe we had one last vineyard to go. It was the largest of the vineyards and another well-known older vineyard in the region called Benegas. We took the tour and by this point we felt we knew the various methods and stages of wine making quite well. At the end of the tour, you guessed it, we had another 4 wines to taste.

It was a brilliant day with excellent wine, great food and good guides that provided us with a lot of new knowledge about Mendoza, the vineyards, wine-making and wine-tasting process. At 5pm we got back to the hostel even happier than our first day of wine-tasting, and we had an early night to make sure we up bright and early the next morning to take the bus back to Chile.