by Richard Siddle for Harpers Wine & Spirit
Famous last words...having said I was sure I would be back in Mendoza city one day it did not expect to be walking back in to the Diplomatic Hotel some 14 hours later.
But for the second time in our brief sojourn in South America we are scuppered by the vagaries of the Argentine transport system and contacted, whilst on the way to the airport via the amazingly efficient team at R&R Teamwork back in the UK, that our plane had been cancelled. And that we were on the 6am flight the following day.
They could give Thomas Cook a run for their money with a service like that.
Thanks to Wines of Agentina we were holed up for another day at the five star Diplomatic, complete with an upgrade to boot for the inconvenience. So it could have been a lot worse.
It also gave me the chance to catch my breath and venture out in to this bustling, agricultural-based city really for the first time. Whilst Mendoza won't trouble your credit card company too much with the lure of boutique shops and shopping malls its charm really lies in just meandering around the tree laden grid system of roads with every day locals going around their business.
That's when the whole place has not packed up for the best part of the day for an afternoon long siesta.
It was also time to reflect on what has been a wonderful first venture into South America, with first the efficiency and splendour of the Errazuriz winery opening and tour of the Aconcagua valley in Chile, to the whirlwind introduction to Argentina and its wineries and winemakers.
This really is a country that seeps wine from every pore. If they say the French have wine in their blood, then the Argentines have it coming out in their sweat. Everyone is a wine expert here, with a view on the best place to grow Malbec and why Bonarda is really the best grape to be found in these parts.
For someone who drinks more than his fair share of Argentine wine back home, it has been a humbling education that I have only been literally scratching the surface of wines from this country (and equally in Chile) and, like with any wine producing country, you only get a sense of its scale, beauty and potential by doing the hard miles and seeing the wineries and landscape for yourself.
Things in perspective
I have also enjoyed a humbling experience in the art, value and importance of journalism with a trip to meet a winemaker with a difference - David Smith, former ITN foreign correspondent, press secretary to Koffi Annan and now director of the United Nations in Argentina.
David also happens to be living his dream and growing vines and living, when he is not helping to keep this part of the world safe, at the footsteps of the Andes in...Read the full story
Richard Siddle: Argentine Adventures, Part Two
