Vineyards Galore

Day 8:
February 13, 2013

Hey it's Lexie blogging here today! Sorry about Tiffany being all negative yesterday. She can be so sarcastic. Anyways, hopefully we all will continue to get along because this vacation is barely halfway over. On a brighter note today was yet another great day here in Argentina! We left the gorgeous Andes Mountains area and headed towards a part of the country commonly known as the wine region. We first checked into Hostel Independencia and unpacked our bags. Hostels might not be the nicest places to stay at but we are on a budget. Today we hired our very own personal chauffeur to take us on a tour of Argentina's vineyards and taste some of it's famous wines.

I'm one of those girls that is obsessed with those wedding planning shows so, to see an actual vineyard made me realize why they are such a popular place to get married at. They are simply beautiful! I'm not really sure what makes a field of grapes growing so cool, but I definitely enjoyed getting to see my first vineyard. In many of the vineyards we saw, the Andes Mountains were rising up in the distance making the view even more spectacular.

The first winery we stopped at is called Bodegas Excorihuela and is home to Francis Mallman's famous restaurant. Apparently he is a celebrity chef in Argentina, so of course we stopped to eat our lunch there. I ordered some milanesa, which is breaded fried steak. Milanesa is very popular throughout Argentina and in the rest of South America. Francis has really mastered the art of cooking , so my fried steak was absolute perfection. The chef perfers to cook on what is called a parrilla, which is basically like a barbecue grate, over hot coals. This is a method of cooking that is extremely popular in Argentina.

After our early lunch, we went to the wine museum at Bodega La Rural. They had displays of machinery and presses that make the wine. Making wine is a process that takes a lot of time between growing the grapes, processing them into wine and then storing them until they age to perfection. Wine grapes are much harder to grow than normal grapes that are found in the grocery store and also have much more complex flavors.

Our last destination of the day was Bodega y Cavas de Weinert. There, we were able to tour some of the wine cellars. I was  expecting the cellars to be super creepy and be dark and musty with lots of spiderwebs, but they were actually pretty cool. The cellars had tons of barrels full of wine that had been sitting down there for years, building up their value. Overall our day was awesome and it was nice having a  chauffeur to take us to our destinations.