Wednesday:

We got up kind of early, maybe 8:30 or so, because we hadn’t arranged any wine tours for that day.  The tours are kind of odd in that a reservation was necessary at many of the wineries.  We hadn’t made a single reservation.  We walked around Mendoza for a while and stopped in at a couple travel agencies.  They tried to sell us on a package that would have included tours of three wineries for about $200 apiece.  This sounded like the biggest ripoff to both of us, so we passed.  As an aside, our idea of visiting a winery is completely different from most other peoples.  We have both been to Napa and we understand what goes on in a winery.  We would prefer not to get a tour and just taste the wines.  And we don’t mind paying for it either.  This is NOT what most people who visit Mendoza want to do, and it’s also not what the tours consist of.  In the end, Jon went into an information kiosk and was able to get a map of a bunch of wineries.  We hired a driver for the day (about $40) and started off at about noon.  The first winery we hit was a little discouraging because we had to take a tour in order to taste.  The tour was really boring. 

The second winery was pretty good.  The wine wasn’t so great, especially a dessert wine that they gave us, but they had a really nice dog there that Dash liked.  We met some European girls there and tried to get them to meet up later, but it didn’t seem like they wanted to so much.  The next winery was ok. We had to take the last 10 minutes or so of the tour with a bunch of old tourists.  That part was really boring, but then we got to the tasting.  The wine was good and the tour guide was really nice.  He was a young guy that was working on his English.  We all sat at tables and they brought out empanadas (obviously making this Jon’s favorite winery).  We sat at the same table as an old Spanish couple, and they bought us a couple of extra empanadas.

We bought a lot of wine at this winery, probably because it was the best one we had gone to thus far.

The fourth winery was ok.  It was interesting and pretty old, but it wasn’t so big of an operation.  The girl who worked there was nice and we enjoyed it, but the wine wasn’t so great.  Jon mimicked a picture that was hanging on the wall and we got a nice picture of that:

The fifth winery was nice.  It was Chandon which is a fairly famous winery, but mainly for its sparkling wines.  The first person that helped us was a guy and he was a real jerk.  The second person was this woman who doesn’t normally serve wine (she has a real job in the back planning events or something) and she was beautiful and nice.  We were getting drunk by this point, so Jon kept asking if he could help himself to the bottle.  Her name was Tatiana, which was also nice.  For some reason we started talking about the Billy Joel song, "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant".  You know, the one that goes, "A bottle of red..."  At first, Dash had had enough, but then he cooled off and was glad to take a picture with the lady.

Anyway, Tatiana hadn’t heard of the song so we started singing it.  She didn’t think we were good singers (at least she’s honest), so then we tried looking for it on the internet.  Not sure if this was such a good idea, but you know what they say... By the time we left Jon had easily had an entire bottle.  Dash too, but it was just a lot less obvious.

The next winery was Baudron.  It was an old woman that gave us the tasting, and Jon liked her but Dash didn’t.

The tasting wasn’t free, but it was good wine.  She also gave us a tour of the cellar, but that wasn’t so interesting. 

The final stop was Norton.  We had to take a tour on this one, but by this point we were drunk enough that the tour just provided a stage to act like idiots.

o 

Geoff would have been so mad if he were with us!  We went on the tour and then dove into the wine. At this point Welch’s grape juice would have tasted great.  We started talking to two French girls and an American guy while we were tasting.  Jon launched into this story about how the French hadn’t been nice to him when he visited France.  Dash really didn’t understand why he did this, but the French girls weren’t that nice anyway.  Our driver wanted to leave even though we were paying him by the hour.  He was fine, but a little annoying. 

As we were leaving we see the French girls and American guy walking to the bus stop.  If they took the bus back it would have taken them forever, so Dash starts to ask if we can give them a ride.  Jon didn’t mind, but the driver didn’t want them to get a ride (even if they paid something!), so when we passed by them Jon yells "Adios amigos!"  Very funny, even though Jon says he didn’t mean anything bad by it.

Once getting back we toyed with the idea of taking a nap, but decided against it.  We walked around to try to get something to eat, but the place we wanted to go to wasn’t open until 8:30 or so.  It was only 7 so we decided to have some pizza at the place next door. 

It was nice enough and easy to kill some time.  We then switched over to place next door at 8:30.  There were some Israeli girls that Jon started talking to and they were eating at another place right next door to the one we were eating at (all these places had outdoor seating so it was all kind of together).  After we had eaten we were having wine and the Israeli girls stopped by to say hi.  The were pretty young (21?) but Dash really liked them even though they weren’t so friendly.  We ordered a nice bottle of wine for us, our 10th of the day, and invited them to sit down.  We had a good time but at around 11 they had to go pack because they were leaving the next day.  Kind of annoying, so we went back to the hotel since we were so drunk anyway.

Easily Dash’s favorite day of the trip.