Vino country
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2005
1
25
65
Trip End
May 11, 2006
Mendoza,
Argentina
Thursday, December 8, 2005
Less than a few hours after being picked up from the hostel we were at the first winery. I chatted to an American and an Irish couple once we arrived. Nice people but not worth swapping contact details with. It's normally easy to tell whether or not you'd really click.
We were given a tour of the first winery and explained the wine making process. The fermentation of white wine is completely natural and only take 10 to 12 days. All the ingredients (yeast and sugar) needed for the process are contained within the grapes, so nothing is added
Rio Mendoza
. The natural gas produced by the fermentation escapes through the top of the tanks. To make Champagne the liquid is bottled straight away and the gases are contained within the bottle. The bottles are left for two years to allow the sediment to settle. At the end of the two years the bottles are tilted with the neck down and turned a quarter turn daily to allow the sediment to collect in the neck. They then freeze the neck, remove the beer-cap-style top, remove the sediment, and cork the bottle.
All the fermentation now takes place in metal tanks but many of the wineries still have the original huge Oak barrels. They were all built in France and shipped over here, the last being in the 1920s. They're twice or three times the height of any man and must hold a thousands of litres of wine. Dad would have been impressed with they way they were constructed.
I enjoyed the wine tasting but didn't quite understand while people were taking one sip and then trowing the rest into the bucket. What's that about?
I spent today rafting on the Rio Mendoza, which was the nuts
Wine barrels
. The section of the river we rafted was Class 3 rapids (out of a possible 6). From afar the river looked pretty tame, fast flowing but tame. After being given instructions and setting out on the river we found this not to be the case. I fell out the boat once while we were going through a particularly rough rapid. The water is freezing and it knocks the breath out of you. We were told not to let go of our paddle when we fell in the water (and as a joke, not to return to the boat without it), so when I dropped mine I was determined to get it back. I didn't realise I was swimming towards another big Eddy (where the water flows backwards against the current and it's easy to get stuck). Luckily the safety kayak came and got me and I managed to get back to the raft (who had managed to pick up my paddle). They're were quite a few adrenalin fueled moments when we were stuck in Eddys and had to battle hard to stop the boat flipping. Legs burnt and knees bruised, lots of fun. I was pleased not to be the only person to fall out the boat....... the only other was a girl, oh the shame!!! Just kidding. It was all good fun.Tomorrow I'm heading over the Andes to spend a few days in Santiago before flying to New Zealand. I'm going to be meeting up with Tato's prima (cousin) who lives there. And maybe Mauricio's friends, but I'm a bit scared of them as none of them speak English, and more importantly they're Mauricio's friends.
