Wine Time - Cordoba to Mendoza

I can't resist a good glass of wine so when I found out about Argentina's famous wine region Mendoza I couldn't just drive by. I just had to explore its different areas and more importantly, drink my way through a few of their wineries. 

Cordoba 

 

We spent a few days in Cordoba waiting for Mitsi, our van, to get a good check-up. 

It's a fun city to explore with tons of stylish coffeeshops, bars, and restaurants to check out. They are all over the city, but my favorite area to walk around at were Guemes and Barrio Nueva Cordoba.

There is  a lot of street art all over the city.

Definitely check out Sarmiento Park. It's a huge green lung in the middle of the city with tons of  restaurants and bars to relax at after a long stroll around the park. 

Getting from Cordoba to Mendoza

We took our time to drive the 650km from Cordoba to Mendoza, choosing to take some of the smaller roads instead of the highway.

 This was one of the scariest sights on a steep mountain road. Thankfully we managed to overtake quickly before that metal cage might have fallen off. 

We spent the night camping on the shore of a small dam in San Francisco del Monte de Oro.

We arrived just in time for the beautiful sunset. 

The next morning, we found an amazing road climbing up countless serpentine turns to Cerro El Amago San Luis. 

A giant Condor joined above our heads. 

Wineries in Mendoza

We visited two of the five wine sub-regions of Mendoza: Maipu and Uco Valley. 

We spent the first night camping at Posada Cavieres Wine Farm. It's a beautiful and calm spot in a vineyard and located perfectly to visit its many surrounding wineries and olive farms by bicycle. Our favorite winery in the area was Bodega Argentia.

Bodega ARGENTIA in Maipu

Argentia is a small winery with a restaurant set in a beautiful garden.

It was interesting to see the different parts of the winery, giving us a better understanding of how their different wines are produced and stored. 

This its their restaurant. Instead of just doing a regular degustation we decided to try their delicious 3 - course menu.

Of course each course was accompanied by a matching wine. 

Uco Valley

This was the huge and well taken care of Community Camping in Tupungato. 

It might get crowded with assado (BBQ)  parties on weekends but we had it all to ourselves. 

It was a great spot to relax after all the wine tastings and of course to prepare for some more wine degustation the next day. 

Bodega ANDELUNA

Bodega Andeluna has a very fancy looking restaurant but their outdoor seating area is very relaxed and has a spectacular view ...

... over the vineyards with the snow-covered Andes in the background. 

The wine degustation tour was already fully booked but they have a long list of wines which can be ordered by glass. Easy solution, we ordered a few and had our own degustation in this beautiful setting. 

Bodega LE AZUL

Bodega Andeluna and Bodega Le Azul are just 2km apart from each other so they can easily be visited on the same day. 

 

I can't recommend this bodega and their restaurant enough. We had an excellent five - course meal with bottomless wine pairings for each course, meaning you get a different bottle of wine for each course and can drink as much as you like of it. It's a fantastic way to try many different Argentinian dishes and wines in  a very laid back atmosphere. Just a heads-up: it was packed even on a Monday, so make sure to book your table well in advance. 

After all the food and wine people were just hanging out on the grass. We loved this chilled atmosphere. Can't imagine anything like this in some of the other much fancier bodegas.

Back to reality

After all the fancy food and wine tastings we didn't want to drive far and ended up sleeping in this spot near the bodega. Welcome back to reality. 

Got to take it with humour.